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Copyright by Missionary Education Movement of the United 
States and Canada. Reproduced by Permission. 


Jesus CuHRIst THE Hore oF THE WoRrLD 


“Suffer the little children to come unto Me and forbid them 
not, for such is the kingdom of heaven.’’ 






OUR CHURCH ee 


PRI 
YOV10 1926 


> & 
£0 OGIOAL > 
The Foreign Missions of the ‘Lutheran 






Church in America 


Aaa -IN-CHIEF 
GEORGE “DRACH, D.D. 


THE UNITED LUTHERAN PUBLICATION HOUSE 
PHILADELPHIA 
1926 


MaAbE IN THE UNITED StTaTES OF AMERICA 


FOREWORD 


The Lutheran Church in America, despite its divi- 
sions into separately organized synods and general 
bodies, largely due to linguistic differences, is more 
of a unity than many who are outside of her member- 
ship seem to realize. She has an inner unity of faith 
and spirit, which is the product of her unwavering 
fidelity to the inspired Word of God as recorded in the 
Sacred Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, 
her use of Luther’s Small Catechism and her sub- 
scription to the confessions of the Lutheran Church. 

In external matters her various parts do not ex- 
press themselves in uniform similarity, and yet there 
are spheres of Church life and activity in which her 
inner unity manifests itself in unmistakable testi- 
mony. Foreign missions is one of these spheres. 

OUR CHURCH ABROAD is one of the first fruits of 
the fellowship of common foreign mission interest and 
effort, which has been cultivated in the Lutheran For- 
eign Missions Conference of America. 

After the World War all Lutherans in America felt 
the need of unity of effort for the benefit of the 
disabled and distressed Lutheran churches in war- 
torn Europe. Those whose primary interest was re- 
lated to foreign missions determined to get together 
to discuss and plan how best to relieve the burdened 
hearts and helpless hands of brethren in Europe, who 

3 


4 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


saw their foreign mission fields stripped of mission- 
aries and separated from their sources of supply at 
the home base, and were unable to do anything about 
it. As a consequence the Lutheran Foreign Missions 
Conference of America was organized in July, 1919; 
and although it has had no financial resources, it has 
been able to advise the National Lutheran Council, — 
which secured funds to preserve European foreign 
missions, how best to administer the money devoted to 
the relief of these missions. This common service of 
love to brethren in the faith led to closer fellowship 
of missionary interest. 

At the annual meeting of the Lutheran Foreign 
Missions Conference at Atlantic City, N. J., in Janu- 
ary, 1923, Rev. Johan Mattson, Secretary of the Board 
of Foreign Missions of the Norwegian Lutheran Free 
Church, suggested that the Conference arrange for 
the publication of a book describing the history of 
foreign missions as carried on by the various Luth- 
eran synods and general bodies in America. At the 
next annual meeting Secretary Mattson outlined the 
contents of the proposed book and the method of 
its production. A year later at the meeting in 1925, 
at Washington, D. C., immediately after the Washing- 
ton Foreign Missions Convention, Rev. George Drach, 
D.D., was elected editor-in-chief, and it was agreed 
that each constituent Board should appoint its repre- 
sentative on the editorial committee, to carry the plan 
into effect. The following were appointed and, to- 
gether with the editor-in-chief, constitute the commit- 
tee: Rev. Professor Edward Pfeiffer, D.D., Rev. J. R. 
Birkelund, M.D., Rev. Professor A. Helland, Rev. 


FOREWORD | 5 


Fred. W. Wyman, Rev. F. Braun, Rev. Frederick 
Brand. 

Under the direction of the editorial committee the 
material for this book has been gathered and organ- 
ized, and is herewith presented for the information 
and encouragement of those who would like to know 
what the Lutheran Church in America has accom- 
plished in foreign missions. 

At the head of each chapter the reader will find 
the name of its author, who alone is responsible for 
the statements it contains. ) 

May the publication of this book stimulate more 
earnest, zealous and active effort on the part of all 
Lutherans in America for the triumph of the truth 
and kingdom of the Lord, Jesus Christ, everywhere 
on earth, to the glory of God the Father, the Son, and 
the Holy Spirit. 

GEORGE DRACH, Editor-in-Chief. 





XIT. 


CONTENTS 


Page 
FOREWORD ....... Girtsatete teas maser aseden tie Univosti sss a decsepoescchtsctamestecccobetecees HOt aD 
LUTHERAN ForEIGN MISSIONS, BY GEORGE DRACH..weee 9 
UnitED LuTHERAN CHURCH, INpIA, BY GrorGE Dracu.... 27 


UniTED LUTHERAN CHURCH, INDIA AND LIBERIA, AFRICA, 
BY GEORGE DRACH! :.c5l.cc A Nala ah SUNDER dp SME EERO he 


Unitep LUTHERAN CHURCH, JAPAN, SOUTH AMERICA, 
Cuina, HoME BASE, BY GEORGE DRACH.issssccsresesseeeeee 89 


NorweEctan LuTHERAN CHuRCH, SouTH AFRICA AND 
Mapacascar, BY J. R. BrrKELUND AND M. J. SToLEE 109 


NorWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH, CHINA, BY M. SaTERLIE 127 


AUGUSTANA Synop, CHINA AND Arrica, By F. W. 
WyMAN SOSH ETSSEH SHEETS SSH SHEESH ER SH SHEE eeesoeee SSSSH HOTT SS SAA TERES ET ESEO STEVE OSES 157 


Jornt Synop oF Ouro, INDIA, By EpwaArp PFEIFFER.......... 190 


Synop oF Iowa, New GuINEA, BY F. BRAUN... LOL 


LUTHERAN Free CHURCH, MADAGASCAR AND CHINA, BY 
ANDREAS. HELLAND a... .ececesceeee SE Ae AT SALEM ee gl Nat 221 


Synop or Missourrt, OHIO AND OTHER STATES, INDIA AND 


CHINA, BY FREDERICK BRAND ....... Rete lo Tit EPR CS RT Saat ION a Vi 
OTHER LUTHERAN BOARDS AND AGENCIES.....sscc0 pees tae hae? % | 
Ey a i aA aM IMB GTR Tet EAR sl PO RE ARAL NO AS nA 


Directory oF AMERICAN LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSION 
BOARDS AND SOCIETIES .......000 REN AA Ge AA Pl OB ee Sek aNd 9 Pe 


REPRINTED AVES Oi tet rore tins OPC UU Sern ome AS a Dy eh Ae ns casened Sotuze OL 


INDEX Pec ee RR Se ARE Te aN SARA a eee cae dCh WOREES catia senonen oc ches asusataruden sstcedasdibececoae 273 
7 


ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS 


(Maps are indicated with *.) 


THE HOPE OF THE WORLD ccccccccccsssoossrecsscesscncecessssssnessessresees PYONtispiece 


Facing Page 
Foreign Mission CONFERENCE, U, (D.C cisssssssacocottbesssessssosesesreattvensers he 
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY GRADUATES, INDIA wecsscocssscssecssescsscsssceseeess OG 
Hosprrat. Doctors, GUNTUR): TNDTA(iss5).aicdsessecdbeascbacesstotadanbepeadaemslanER 
MISSION SCHOOL EXAMINATION, INDIA cesccccccssscscescsseccecscescsccasssssssces 49 
*InptIA Mission Frietp, Unitep LuTHERAN CHURCH ......... Page 54 
*LATHERAN (CHURCH IN AFRICA. 2iicvcssccroseconscecchassaconevscatdes cose tonay aU 
(JRUS) SCHOOL BABIES, | LLIBERTAs/L1as cessive dc teks ceases eotevagtncg te mnaty es naan 
GRADUATES: OF A) GIRLS’ (SCHOOL, JAPAN (lL ho cre csckectnandemceeest En 
Mission’ BUILpINGS, “ARGENTINE .)i0:..pcs0lcsscccrcseceeolesneanannenchedes ogtaivek aa 
UnitEp LUTHERAN CHURCH MISSIONARIES, CHINA csssssscsecscsseeree 97 
CHURCH AND MISSION STATION, MADAGASCAR csccscssssssccecescerseceseseee L1Z 
AFTER A SUNDAY SERVICE IN MADAGASCAR oissccssssssscscsccsecssecsccsesesseres LLG 
ORGANIZATION, MEETING, : CHINA \il.ntecheesinustesccncousedessoeros suseatsersuaasnaauearin ane 
OUTSTATION—GIRLS’ HIGH SCHOOL, CHINA .ssccsccccssccessccesceressessecers 12D 
*CuiInaA Mission Fretp, NorwEGIAN LUTHERAN CHUuRCH.... Page 147 
A GROUP OF CHINESE CHRISTIANS !1.is:lcscrcaccoaledcncsesalschocabied keatei tease amae nana 
ORPHANS HOME , CHILDREN, CHINA siscicssscsvcscsecsesorseronesesss neonsdsedacosenel LOM 
HASSELQUIST AND EMMY EWALD SCHOOLS, CHINA sesscscssssseesereeee 176 
PRIMARY) SCHOOL GiIris, ‘CHINA | ue eee gee 
Joint Synop or Onto INDIA’ PASTORS (.45ic.cliciscccseesseberenecteneeceane 
CHorce ar: Porrour,  INpias fi.accsciiveiciecdtidoclcucse ohacepeeneeinie aie an 
*INDIA MIssION FIELD, JOINT SYNOD OF OHIO wsssseseeereeeeee Page 195 
PREACHING THE GOSPEL IN NEW GUINEA csssssscssssssesssseencecetsrsetscere 20S 
LUTHERAN CHURCHES, SANTALISTAN, INDIA cesssccssssssssesssessesseseecssseeees 209 
*NEW GUINEA MISSION FIELD ws.csscsssscsssssssesesssssessssesesesesesesreeere Page 216 
Rev. J. B. JERSTAD, MADAGASCAR cescsscscsescsseees cobbbbhapheli ave lain: toheblaglas teeta 
Rev. J. O. Dyrnes, M.D., AND WIFE, MADAGASCAR sesssscsssnsseseeee 225 
*MADAGASCAR MISSION FIELDS w.csscsssssccsescsassssessesssssesssseseseseeseee Page 227 
Missourt LUTHERAN PROFESSORS, ETC., INDIA ccscsssessscserssssssecereseseee 240 
Missournt LUTHERAN CONFERENCE—ORPHANS, INDIA cesccssesssesee 241 
* AMERICAN LUTHERAN ForeIGN Mission FIELDS ..... dass cose unas, NAMIE 

8 


OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


CHAPTER I 
LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
GEORGE DRACH 


The Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century, 
in Germany and Switzerland, France and Sweden, 
scotland and England, lived in the greatest age of 
discovery the world has ever seen and yet, for various 
reasons, no effort was made by them and their imme- 
diate followers to spread the gospel beyond the bor- 
ders of their own christianized lands. For over a 
century and a half the churches of the Protestant 
Reformation showed no interest in foreign missions 
and sent no missionaries to non-Christian countries. 
How may this missionary lethargy be explained in 
view of the fact, clearly demonstrated by subsequent 
history, that the principles of the Protestant Refor- 
mation inevitably lead to missionary activity? 

The reformation of the Church was a stupendous 
task, calling for all the energy and attention of those 
who were engaged in it. Moreover, this task was so 
absorbing and far-reaching that it could not be com- 
pleted within the limits of a few decades. Further- 
more, foreign countries which were inhabited by non- 

9 


10 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Christians, as far as they were being discovered and 
occupied as colonies of European governments in the 
sixteenth century, were under the control of Roman 
Catholic Spain and Portugal and, therefore, inacces- 
sible to Protestants. In the seventeenth century, when 
the Protestant countries of Holland, Denmark and 
England were establishing their colonies in America 
and Asia, and the way was opening for the beginning 
of Protestant foreign mission work, the churches as 
such did not grasp the opportunity because they had 
failed to keep alive the compelling conviction of the 
common Christian obligation to preach the gospel in 
all the world. On the continent of Europe the Thirty 
Years’ War (1618-1648) kept religious antagonism 
at fever heat and reduced the spiritual life of the 
churches to a low degree of vitality. At the same 
time the attitude of the theologians and leaders of the 
Church became openly hostile to foreign missions. 
Thus the theological faculties of Wittenberg and Jena 
misinterpreted the great commission of Jesus Christ 
by limiting its obligations and scope to the missionary 
efforts and writings of His apostles. The feeble voices 
and endeavors of the pioneer Protestant missionaries 
and missionary advocates of the seventeenth century 
were derided as outbursts of religious fanaticism. 
Prominent preachers spoke vehemently against for- 
eign missions. The established Churches shifted their 
missionary responsibility to the shoulders of the 
rulers of European kingdoms, who were conducting 
colonial enterprises in America and Asia; and these 
rulers did practically nothing more than to provide the 
colonists with an irregular and unsatisfactory supply 


LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSIONS il 


of chaplains, a few of whom made earnest efforts to 
reach surrounding American aborigines or Asiatic 
non-Christians. 

It is pathetic to read the ardent appeals of Justini- 
anus von Weltz in 1664, see him sell all his goods in 
Germany and sail for Surinam in South America, soli- 
tary and alone, only to find a martyr’s grave a few 
months after landing. It is disappointing to hear the 
philosopher Leibnitz arguing in favor of foreign mis- 
sions, only to be ignored. It is distressing to read 
what Adrianus Saravia in Holland, as early as 1590, 
wrote concerning the missionary obligation of the 
Church, and to find that his appeals failed to disturb 
the prevailing lethargy. 

Nevertheless, it is reassuring to observe that the 
principles of the sixteenth century Reformation were 
bound sooner or later to lead the Protestant Churches 
to see and to accept their missionary obligation. When 
once it had been clearly apprehended that the open 
Bible, which the Reformation restored and which the 
reformers translated into their respective vernaculars, 
is the Word of God for all peoples in their own 
tongues, that salvation by grace for any man implies 
salvation for every man, that the kingdom of God on 
earth is a kingdom without frontiers, then the Protes- 
tant Churches in every land of Europe and America 
with amazing zeal and marvelous success pushed for- 
ward and outward and onward all their lines of 
spiritual conquest until the ends of the earth had been 
reached. Today after two and one-quarter centuries 
of effort Protestant missionaries in almost all parts 
of the world are telling the good news of redemption 


12 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


by Jesus Christ and are calling men of every race to 
come into the kingdom of heaven. 

The World Missionary Atlas, which furnishes most 
reliable statistics, records 700 organizations having 
headquarters in North America, Great Britain, the 
continent of Europe, South America, Australia and 
New Zealand, which are carrying on the work of Pro- 
testant foreign missions. Their total income in 1923 
was $69,555,148, of which $45,272,793 were received 
by societies having headquarters in the United States 
and Canada. The number of missionaries, including 
wives, reaches the impressive total of 29,188. Com- 
municants and inquirers under Christian instruction, 
numbering 8,342,378, are reported for the 116 areas 
for which missionary statistics are given. 


BEGINNING OF LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 

Lutheran foreign missions properly begin with the 
establishment of the Danish-Halle mission in India in 
1705. Previous efforts on the part of individuals like 
Justinianus von Weltz in Dutch Guiana or Peter 
Heiling, who went to Abyssinia in 1634, were fruit- 
less. Those of Lutheran rulers like Gustavus Vasa 
of Sweden, who sent Michael Gustavus Adolphus to 
preach to the Lapps of Northern Europe in 1559, 
were animated more by interests of state than by 
any intention to lift the Church to the plane of world- 
wide missionary endeavor. Even the Danish king, 
Frederick IV, was thinking solely of the inhabitants 
of his colony in South India when he arranged to 
send out Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and Henry Pluet- 
schau. Yet he commissioned them to be missionaries 


LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 13 


and not merely chaplains; and he appropriated 9,000 
marks to finance this first Lutheran foreign mission- 
ary work. He and his court chaplain, Dr. Luetkens, 
were influenced by the German Pietists under the 
leadership of Philip Jacob Spener and August Her- 
mann Francke at Halle. Ziegenbalg and Pluetschau 
had been trained in the Halle institution and Dr. Luet- 
kens had applied to Francke for two qualified men to 
serve as Lutheran missionaries in India. They left 
Copenhagen on November 29, 1705, and reached Tran- 
quebar July 9, 1706, after an ocean voyage around 
the Cape of Good Hope lasting more than seven 
months. Today one may make the journey from Den- 
mark to India through the Suez Canal in less than 
four weeks. 

German Pietism was the soil in which the first seeds 
of Lutheran foreign missions took root and received 
systematic and fruitful cultivation. This soil also 
furnished strength for the seeds of foreign missionary 
activity, which grew under Zinzendorf’s inspiring 
leadership in the Moravian Church, whose foreign 
mission work was begun in 1732, when its first mis- 
sionaries, Leonhard Dober and David Nitzschmann, set 
out for the island of St. Thomas in the West Indies. 


THE DANISH HALLE MISSION 

When Ziegenbalg and Pluetschau reached Tranque- 
bar, India, they found the Danish officials of the 
colony more hostile to them and their work than the 
Hindu priests, but they endured and labored patiently 
and laid solid foundations for the Christian Church in 
India. Sitting down among the Tamil children in 
school they wrote like them in the sand with their 


14 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


fingers to learn the vernacular. They opened mission 
schools and at once planned to translate the New Tes- 
tament and Luther’s Small Catechism. On May 5, 
1707, ten months after their arrival, they publicly bap- 
tized five adult Indian servants of Danish masters. 
On August 14th they held the first service in the New 
Jerusalem church. The next year Ziegenbalg under- 
took his first extensive missionary tour in the king- 
dom of Tanjore and his reports of the friendly interest 
of the people, published at Halle, excited widespread 
enthusiasm. On October 17, 1708, he began his trans- 
lation of the New Testament into Tamil, the first at- 
tempt made to give one of the peoples of India the 
Word of God in their mother tongue. Three German 
colleagues from Halle, one of whom was Gruendler, 
soon joined the first two missionaries. By this time in- 
terest in the new enterprise had been awakened in 
Europe, especially in England, and the Society for 
Promoting Christian Knowledge, established in 1698, 
began to receive and forward funds for the Danish- 
Halle mission in India. The Anglican Society for 
the Propagation of the Gospel (1701) also sent assist- 
ance in money and books and the East India Com- 
pany offered to help the mission by conveying books 
and letters free of charge. 

Ziegenbalg remained at work in India after Pluet- 
schau returned to Germany in 1711, completed the 
Tamil New Testament, began to write a dictionary 
and started the first missionary printery in India, 
with a printing press donated and sent out by the 
English Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 
Feeling that he could best serve the interests of the 


LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 15 


mission by returning to Europe, Ziegenbalg left Tran- 
quebar in October, 1714. In Copenhagen he reported 
to the Mission Board (Collegium) and in Germany to 
the supporting constituency at Halle and in Wuerttem- 
burg. Before returning to India he married Maria 
Dorothea Saltzmann, who “has the honor of being the 
first woman ever sent to a foreign mission field.” 

In England he was presented to King George I, who 
wrote to the missionary after his return to Tranque- 
bar, in 1716, expressing satisfaction ‘not only because 
the work undertaken by you of converting the heathen 
to the Christian faith doth, by the grace of God, pros- 
per, but also because in this our kingdom such a laud- 
able zeal for the promotion of the gospel prevails.” 

In 1719, at the early age of 36 years, in the midst 
of abundant labors at Tranquebar, Ziegenbalg died, 
as at his request with the accompaniment of a violin 
those who stood at his bedside sang the German choral 
“Jesus Christ, My Sure Defence” (Jesus, meine Zuver- 
sicht). One hundred and thirty years later Dr. Alex- 
ander Duff visited the new church which Ziegenbalg 
had built in 1718, after the first structure had been 
swept away by the sea, and wrote: “I mounted the 
pulpit and with no ordinary emotion gazed around 
from this position, from which Ziegenbalg, Gruendler 
and Schwartz so often proclaimed free salvation to 
thousands in Tamil, German, Danish and Portuguese. 
At the end of the wings of the church on either side 
of a plain altar lies the mortal remains of Ziegenbalg 
and Gruendler, two men of brief but brilliant and im- 
mortal career in the mighty work of Indian evangeli- 
zation. Theirs was a lofty and indomitable spirit, 


16 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


breathing the most fervid piety.” Ziegenbalg left 
355 converts, a complete Tamil Bible and Catechism, 
a dictionary, a mission seminary for training Indian 
Christian workers and a number of mission schools. 
“Certainly,” is Dr. Duff’s verdict, “he was a great 
missionary, considering that he was the first, inferior 
to none, scarcely second to any that followed him.” 

From the Halle institution under Francke’s direc- 
tion the letters and reports.of the missionaries in 
India were broadcasted in printed form. Bogatzky, 
under the inspiration of the spirit of Halle, wrote the 
first great missionary hymn: “Awake, Thou Spirit, 
Who Did’st Fire the Watchmen of the Church’s Youth” 
(Wach auf, du Geist der ersten Zeugen). From Halle 
in the course of one hundred years no less than sixty 
missionaries went to India, among them that mission- 
ary star of the first magnitude, Christian Frederick 
Schwartz, whose remarkable work at Tanjore and in 
Tinnevelli won for him the full confidence of Rajah 
Serfojee and the sincere praise of future generations 
of missionaries. The rajah built a Christian church 
and parsonage in Tanjore, and when Schwartz died 
in 1798, this Hindu prince and the East India Com- 
pany erected monuments to his memory. At the close 
of the century the Tamil Christian community num- 
bered about 20,000. Then German rationalism under- 
mined the work at the home base and the few mis- 
sionaries who accepted the call to go to India were 
so saturated with this intellectual poison that they 
paid more attention in the field to the study of its 
flora and fauna than to the conversion and care of 
souls. The preservation of this first Lutheran foreign 


LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 17 


mission was due to the interest and support of the 
English Church missionary societies, which also re- 
tained the larger part of the field. In 1840 the Leip- 
sic Lutheran Missionary Society of Germany inherited 
a portion of the work and developed it with consider- 
able success until the outbreak of the World War in 
1914, when the Board of Foreign Missions of the 
Church of Sweden, which had furnished missionaries 
and funds for a number of years previous to the war, 
assumed full responsibility for the entire Leipsic mis- 
sion field. 


OTHER FOREIGN MISSIONARY PIONEERS 


Soon after the Danish-Halle mission had made a 
good beginning, the mission college in Copenhagen 
turned its attention to two other fields: Lapland and 
Greenland. One of its graduates, Thomas von Westen, 
undertook three missionary journeys to preach the 
gospel to the Lapps in 1716-1722, and another, the 
Swedish missionary Per Fijellstroem, distinguished 
himself for his literary work among these northern 
people. Hans Egede, a Norwegian pastor, was sent 
to Greenland in 1721. He and his wife, Gertrude 
Rask, burned with zeal to convert the Eskimos, and 
their son Paul followed in their steps. Zinzendorf, 
who as a representative of the court of Saxony at the 
coronation of King Christian VI of Denmark had 
met in Copenhagen two Eskimos baptized by Egede, 
induced the Moravian Church to send out Matthaeus 
Stach and his cousin, Christian Stach, to Greenland in 
1733, three years before Hans Egede left this field. 
Moravian missionaries continued to labor in Green- 


18 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


land amid most discouraging privations until the work 
of evangelization was completed, and in 1900 the 
Moravian Church handed back its mission in Green- 
land to the Danish State Church. 

Kiernander, a Swedish missionary of the Danish- 
Halle mission at Cuddalore, India, became the first 
Protestant missionary to Calcutta in 1758. For 
twenty-eight years he labored, making several hun- 
dreds of converts and building a church for his con- 
gregation. 

The renewed spirit of adventure and discovery in- 
augurated by Captain Cook’s journey around the 
world, his and others’ interesting reports of unknown 
lands and peoples, the political upheaval of the French 
Revolution, the spread of a new humanitarianism and 
the rapid increase of trade and industry during the 
eighteenth century aroused the Protestant Churches 
of Europe and especially of England to new mission- 
ary endeavor. William Carey, the cobbler and Bap- 
tist preacher of Kettering, England, became the father 
of English missions when he established the Baptist 
Missionary Society in 1792, and the next year sailed 
for India, expecting great things from God and under- 
taking great things for God. There followed imme- 
diately the establishment of the London Missionary 
Society in 1795 and of the Church Missionary Society 
of the Church of England in 1799. 


FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETIES IN HUROPE 
The influence of this missionary movement in Eng- 
land penetrated to the continent of Europe, where the 
Moravian Church consistently had cultivated the 


LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 19 


spirit of missions. In North Germany a pious lay- 
man, von Schirnding of Dobrilugk, who had main- 
tained close relations with the London Missionary 
society, offered to furnish funds for the establishment 
of a mission school and secured the co-operation of 
Rev. John Jaenicke, pastor of a Lutheran church in 
Berlin, whose early association had been with the 
Moravian Church and whose brother served as a 
Halle missionary in India. Financial reverses forced 
von Schirnding to withdraw his active support, but 
others were interested by Jaenicke and English socie- 
ties sent a few encouraging contributions. About 
eighty missionaries were educated in Jaenicke’s mis- 
sion school in Berlin, among them such outstanding 
pioneers as Karl Rhenius, who labored with great suc- 
cess in Tinnevelli, India, and Karl Guetzlaff, the first 
Lutheran missionary to China. Their appeals to 
Lutherans in America made a profound impression 
upon the missionary societies which had been organ- 
ized in the General Synod in 1835 and in the Minis- 
terium of Pennsylvania in 1836, and resulted in the 
sending of the first American Lutheran foreign mis- 
sionary, Rev. Christian Frederick Heyer, M.D., to 
India in 1842. i 

Most of Jaenicke’s pupils served under the London 
or the Church Missionary Society of England. After 
Jaenicke’s death in 1827 and the closing of his school 
soon thereafter, the Berlin Missionary Society, organ- 
ized in 1824, inherited the benefits of the missionary 
ardor created by Jaenicke and, in 1834, it sent out 
its first missionaries to South Africa. Before that, in 
1822, the Basel Society had sent missionaries to the 


20 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Caucasus, and a little later, in 1827, it made an at- 
tempt to establish a mission in Liberia, but soon aban- 
doned this effort in favor of the Gold Coast. The 
Rhenish Missionary Society began its independent ex- 
istence in 1828. The Leipsic Society was established 
at Dresden in 1836, later moving its headquarters to 
Leipsic; the North German Society in the same year 
began at Hamburg, later going to Bremen; the Goss- 
ner Society in 1837 started its work at Berlin. The 
Hermannsburg Society owes its establishment in 1849 
to the missionary zeal of Louis Harms, the Schleswig- 
Holstein Society in 1877 to the devotion of Pastor Jen- 
sen, of Breklum. The Neuendettelsau Society, organ- 
ized in 1849, after co-operating many years with the 
Immanuel Synod of Australia in work among the 
Papuas of New Guinea, undertook independent work 
in a part of this field in 1885. The story of the co- 
operation of Lutherans in America with these and 
other German missionary societies will be told in sub- 
sequent chapters. 

In Denmark the college of missions at Copenhagen 
failed to develop any mission work of its own, because 
it served primarily the interests of the state and of 
commercial companies in Danish colonies. Then, in 
1821, the Danish Missionary Society (Danske Mis- 
sionsselskab) was founded by Pastor Roenne as an 
attempt to popularize the work of foreign missions; 
but until recently this society made comparatively 
slow progress. Its missions are located in Madras, 
India, and in Manchuria. In 1867, H. P. Borrensen, 
of Denmark, and L. O. Skrefsrud, of Norway, estab- 
lished the Indian Home Mission to the Santals, now 


LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 21 


known as the Santal Mission of the Northern 
Churches, which still draws some of its financial sup- 
port from Danish and Norwegian churches in 
America. 

The chief missionary society in Norway is the 
Norske Missions Selskap, founded in 1842 by Stav- 
anger, whose missions among the Zulus in Natal, Af- 
rica, in Madagascar, and in the Hunan and Hupeh 
provinces of China have received considerable assist- 
ance from Norwegian Lutherans in America. 

The first missionary society established in Sweden 
was the Svenska Missions Sallskapet, founded at 
Stockholm in 1835. In 1876 this society was ab- 
sorbed into the Board of Foreign Missions of the 
Church of Sweden (Svenska Kyrkans Mission), whose 
fields now are in the Hunan province of China, in 
Natal, Transvaal and Southern Rhodesia, Africa, and 
in the Madras Presidency of India. An independent 
society, the Evangeliska Fosterlands Stiftelsen, which 
originated as an Inner Mission Society, began its for- 
eign mission work in 1861 and conducts missions 
near the border of Abyssinia, in Eritria, and in Ita- 
lian Somaliland, Africa, and among the Gonds of the 
Central provinces of India. The relation of Lutherans 
of Swedish ancestry in America to missionary socie- 
ties in their mother country has been rather remote, 
because the Augustana Synod’s interest was absorbed 
first by its co-operation with the General Council and 
then by its own missions in China and Tanganyika, 
Africa. 

When Finland celebrated the 700th anniversary of 
its christianization in 1859, the Finnish Lutheran 


22 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Church Missionary Society was established with head- 
quarters in Helsingfors. Until 1870 it sent its foreign 
mission contributions to the Rhenish Missionary So- 
ciety and then it assumed independent responsibility 
for its present field in Southwest Africa. It now 
conducts a mission also in the Hunan and Hupeh prov- 
inces of China. The Lutheran Evangelical Associ- 
ation, established in 1873, sent a few missionaries to 
Japan before the war and has five there now. 

There is a small Lutheran missionary society in 
Holland, which began a mission in the Batu Islands 
in the Netherlands Indies in 1882. 


BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN LUTHERAN FOREIGN 
MISSIONS 


Like other groups of Protestant colonists in Amer- 
ica, such as the Pilgrim Fathers in New England, led 
by John Eliot in 1680; the Mayhews, the last of whom 
passed away in 1806; the ardent Brainerd brothers, 
David and John, who as agents of the Scottish Propa- 
gation Society labored among the Delaware Indians 
until the American War of Independence; the Quakers 
and Moravians in Pennsylvania, who showed a fine 
missionary spirit in their relations to the Indians, 
the pioneer Dutch, Swedish and German Lutherans 
in New York and Pennsylvania also had among their 
number men who sincerely desired to give the gospel 
to the red men. Thus the Swedish minister at Tini- 
cum, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, Rev. John Cam- 
panius, learned the language of the neighboring Dela- 
ware Indians in order that he might do missionary 
work among them, and translated Luther’s Small 


LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 23 


Catechism for them in 1660. All these sporadic 
efforts, however, failed to lead to a systematic organi- 
zation of missionary work. Only after more frequent 
contacts with the Far East were established and its 
inhabitants were revealed as being in desperate need 
of the gospel, did the Lutheran Church in America, 
like other Protestant churches here, give more serious 
thought to the task of reaching the non-Christian 
world through organized missionary effort. The first 
foreign mission board of America is the American 
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, organ- 
ized in 1810 as an interdenominational effort. For a 
number of years Lutheran congregations in the Unit- 
ed States sent occasional contributions to this board. 
The Central Missionary Society of the General Synod 
of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United 
States, started in 1885 at York, Pennsylvania, was 
intended to be both a home and a foreign missionary 
society. So was the Society for the Propagation of 
the Gospel, which was founded by members of the 
Ministerium of Pennsylvania at Easton in 1886. In 
response to the appeals of Rhenius, after he became 
an independent missionary at Tinnevelli, India, the 
German Foreign Missionary Society, afterwards called 
the Foreign Missionary Society of the Evangelical 
Lutheran Church in the United States, was organized 
at Hagerstown, Maryland, in 1837. Contributions 
were forwarded to India, first to Rhenius and then to 
his son-in-law, Mueller. After the death of Rhenius 
the society called Rev. C. F. Heyer in 1840 to go as 
a missionary to India, but he objected to the society’s 
affiliation with the American Board, resigned, and 


24 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


offered his services to the society of the Ministerium 
of Pennsylvania, which sent him out in 1842. The 
story of the pioneer work of this great missionary 
will be told in the next chapier. 

The foreign missionary societies of the General 
Synod and of the Ministerium of Pennsylvania con- 
tinued their separate existence, but co-operated in the 
Telugu mission in India, until in 1867 confessional 
differences culminated in the withdrawal of a number 
of synods from the General Synod and their separate 
organization into the General Council of the Evangel- 
ical Lutheran Church of North America. Each of 
the general bodies, in 1869, constituted a standing 
board to take the place of the independent missionary 
societies. The field in India was divided, the General 
Synod taking the southern portion with headquarters 
at Guntur, the General Council occupying the northern 
part with headquarters at Rajahmundry. When these 
general bodies and the United Synod in the South 
were merged, in 1918, to form the United Lutheran 
Church in America, their foriegn boards also were 
merged and the fields in India were combined into 
one harmonious mission organization. 

The general and the independent Lutheran bodies 
which co-operated with the General Council in foreign 
mission work before the merger or now are co-operat- 
ing with the United Lutheran Church, are: the Au- 
gustana Synod, which has furnished missionaries and 
funds for the Telugu mission in India since 1878, and 
also has co-operated in the Porto Rico mission field; 
the Iowa Synod, whose co-operation in the India mis- 
sion has practically ceased and whose foreign mission- 


LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 25 


ary interest now is entirely consumed by its mission 
in New Guinea; the United Danish Church which, 
after a period of independent work in Japan, has com- 
bined its forces with those of the United Lutheran 
Church in the empire of the Rising Sun; and the Ice- 
landic Synod, which supports in part one of its mem- 
bers as a missionary in Japan. 

Concerning the organization of the foreign mission 
boards of Lutheran general and independent bodies 
and their work in non-Christian lands, the following 
chapters furnish a more or less detailed description. 
The statistics at the close of this volume record the 
imposing figures of all their foreign missionary ef- 
forts, showing that over $2,000,000 were contributed 
in 1924, and that 670 missionaries, including wives, 
are at work in 22 areas, in which there is today a 
total Lutheran community of 180,000 baptized 
members. 

The following pages will contain frequent refer- 
ences to the dilemma of Lutheran missionary societies 
in Europe during and after the World War. Here it 
should be noted that, in addition to former German 
mission fields transferred to American Lutheran 
boards, there are a number which have been preserved 
by the National Lutheran Council, an organized 
agency of Lutheran general bodies and synods in 
America, which each year since 1920, by an annual 
expenditure of approximately $123,000, has served as 
the foster mother of the following missions: the Ber- 
lin Society’s missions in the Canton and Shantung 
provinces of China; the Schleswig-Holstein Society’s 
mission in and around Pakhoi, China; the Finnish 


26 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Society’s missions in China and Japan; the Gossner 
mission in India; the Hermannsburg mission in South 
Africa; and to some extent the Leipsic mission in 
Tanganyika, East Africa, a part of which has been 
assigned to the Augustana synod. 

Whatever adjustments concerning the care and con- 
trol of former European Lutheran foreign missions 
finally may be made, the missionary leadership of the 
Lutheran Church in America now is acknowledged 
by the European societies. This lays a heavy burden 
of responsibility upon Lutherans in America, whose 
foreign missionary work has become so extensive since 
the World War as to include fields in India, China, 
Japan, New Guinea, Liberia, Cameroon, Madagascar, 
Tanganyika, Kurdistan, Siberia, South America and 
North America. The future history of American 
Lutheran foreign missions undoubtedly will record 
great achievements for the extension of the kingdom 
of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, in all the 
world, born of the holy resolve to do our full share 
as a Lutheran Church to fulfill His last command. 


CHAPTER II. 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH 


GEORGE DRACH 
INDIA 


THE FIRST FOREIGN MISSIONARY OF THE LUTHERAN 
CHURCH IN AMERICA. 


The history of American Lutheran foreign missions 
begins with a name which will be honored as long 
as Lutherans do foreign missionary work. The man 
whose dauntless zeal and intrepid faith led him to 
volunteer at the age of forty-eight years to become 
the first foreign missionary of the Lutheran Church 
in America is Christian Frederick Heyer. Once while 
engaged in a conversation in India a Hindu priest 
desired to know the missionary’s name. Being told 
that it was Heyer, the priest smiled and said, “I do 
not mean your office, but your name.” Pointing to 
himself the priest continued, “I am an Iyer,” which 
means a religious teacher. The missionary remarked 
that by a strange coincidence this was both his name 
and his office. Another play on words would make 
Heyer similar to higher; and that this man’s mission- 
ary spirit and service moved on a higher plane than 
that of his contemporaries is evident from his re- 
markable career. His usual signature was C. F. 

at 


28 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Heyer, but his full baptismal name is John Christian 
Frederick. He was born on July 10, 1798, at Heim- 
stedt, duchy of Brunswick, Germany. Europe was 
then in a state of political turmoil subsequent to the 
rise and spread of revolutionary ideas and movements, 
which made the United States of America free and 
independent of England. The figure of Napoleon 
Bonaparte was emerging from the background of cur- 
rent events to shape the course of European history. 
Heyer was eleven and a half years old when Napoleon 
was crowned emperor of France. It is more than a 
coincidence, moreover, that the year of Heyer’s birth 
corresponds with that in which William Carey landed 
on the soil of India, where forty-nine years later 
Heyer established the first foreign mission of the 
Lutheran Church in America. 

Heyer’s father was a master furrier in Helmstedt, 
and when his son, at the age of fourteen years, was 
sent to America, he was apprenticed to an uncle who 
operated a small hat factory in Philadelphia. Not 
making hats, however, but saving souls was to be his 
life work. He studied theology under the direction 
of Lutheran pastors in Philadelphia and then returned 
to Germany to complete his course at the University 
of Goettingen. He came back to the United States and 
was licensed by the Ministerium of Pennsylvania in 
1817, at York, Pennsylvania. After he had served as 
a missionary in Crawford and Erie counties, Pennsyl- 
vania, with residence at Meadville, he accepted the 
call to a settled pastorate at Cumberland, Maryland, 
including outlying preaching points in a territory 
which extended eighty miles in one direction and 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 29 


thirty-five in another. When he was ordained by the 
Ministerium of Pennsylvania at Lancaster in 1820, he 
was commissioned to investigate conditions in Ken- 
tucky and Indiana. He spent over three months on 
a tour of these states, traveling on foot and on horse- 
back and covering a distance of 2,500 miles. In 1824 
he became pastor of the congregation at Somerset, 
Pennsylvania. After periods of interruption, during 
which he served as an agent of the Sunday School 
Union and again as a home missionary in Southern 
Illinois, in Missouri, and at Pittsburgh, he twice re- 
turned to this pastorate, which to this day honors him 
above all its other pastors. While serving in Pitts- 
burgh as pastor of Holy Trinity Church his wife died 
at Somerset in 1839. Interment was made in the 
cemetery at Friedens, near Somerset, where thirty- 
four years later his body was buried by her side. He 
did not marry again. 

From Pittsburgh Heyer moved to Baltimore, after 
having accepted the call of the Foreign Missionary 
society of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the 
United States to serve as a missionary to India, in 
order to study medicine and Sanscrit at Washington 
University. Meanwhile he took charge of Holy Trin- 
ity Church at Fells Point. When Heyer declined to 
serve under the direction of the American Board, the 
Pennsylvania Ministerium’s Society for the Propaga- 
tion of the Gospel, to which he had applied for an 
appointment, published an appeal which not only 
stated that he had been called to establish a mission 
in India and that many Lutheran ministers belonging 
to other synods than the Ministerium of Pennsylvania 


30 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


had signified their willingness to co-operate, but which 
also assured the Church that the establishment of this 
foreign mission would in nowise cause its promoters 
and friends to lose sight of dispersed and destitute 
brethren in the United States, especially in the distant 
West. 

Heyer was commissioned at a public service in 
Philadelphia on Sunday, October 5, 1841. Ten days 
later he sailed from Boston and reached Colombo, 
Ceylon, after a sea voyage of five months around the 
Cape of Good Hope. From Tuticorin on the Coroman- 
del coast he traveled by palankeen and bearers north- 
ward through the Tamil country, in which the Dan- 
ish-Halle missionaries had been at work for over a 
century. The Telugus, among whom Heyer had been 
instructed to begin the American Lutheran mission 
in India, inhabit that part of the peninsula which 
extends northward from the city of Madras along the 
coast of the bay of Bengal almost as far as the Mahan- 
andi river and far inland into the heart of the Dekkan, 
covering an area somewhat larger than that of Spain. 

On July 31, 1842, Heyer reached Guntur, a large 
town eighteen miles south of the Kistna river, the gov- 
ernment seat of the Guntur district. Here he found 
in Henry Stokes, Esquire, the collector of the district, 
an ardent friend and supporter of Christian mission- 
ary work, who already had begun a Telugu-English 
day school in the town. This school the collector at 
once placed in charge of the missionary, who added 
a number of purely Telugu schools of a primary grade. 
Heyer held regular Sunday and weekday services for 
the officials and employees of the East India Company, 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 31 


and a Telugu service on Sunday for their servants 
and the pupils in his schools. In November, 1842, 
he opened the first girls’ school with an enrollment of 
fifteen pupils. He also began a teacher’s training class 
and several Sunday schools. At the close of his first 
year of work he baptized three adults and his schools 
numbered seven with ten teachers, 158 boys and 22 
girls. In 1843 the Foreign Missionary Society of the 
General Synod decided to co-operate in the Telugu 
mission and the next year sent out Rev. Walter Gunn, 
a graduate of Gettysburg Theological Seminary and a 
member of the Hartwick Synod. 

Meanwhile Heyer had been in correspondence with 
the North German Missionary Society, whose atten- 
tion to opportunities for other missions in the Telugu 
country had been drawn by Rev. Wyneken and other 
friends in America. As a consequence this society, 
in 1848, sent out Rev. Louis P. M. Valett who, after 
conferring with Heyer, started work at Rajahmundry 
in January, 1845. Toward the close of the same year 
Valett was joined by two additional missionaries, 
Charles William Groenning and Ferdinand August 
Heise. 

Leaving Gunn at Guntur, Heyer returned to the 
United States in 1845, and the entire responsibility 
for the new mission was assumed by the Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society of the General Synod. After a lapse 
of two and a half years, during which he served St. 
John’s Church in Biddle Street, Baltimore, Maryland, 
and completed his course in medicine at Washington 
University, Heyer went back to India in 1847, as the 
missionary supported by the Society of the Minis- 


32 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


terium of Pennsylvania, and served for ten years. 
During this term he did his best work in the Palnad 
taluk, residing at Gurzala, where he found abundant 
opportunity to use his knowledge and skill as a phys- 
ician as well as to do evangelistic and educational 
work. Here he began the first boarding school in the 
mission by taking a number of Christian boys into 
his home. Tours of fifty miles and more on foot fre- 
quently were made. “Sometimes,” he wrote, “when 
I found no better shelter, I spread a blanket over the 
legs of my table to exclude the night air and slept 
beneath it as though it were a small tent.” 

The North German Missionary Society, on account 
of the disturbed state of political affairs in Germany, 
found it impossible to furnish enough money to pro- 
vide for the support of its three missionaries and their 
work at Rajahmundry, and on January 1, 1851, trans- 
ferred its mission to the Foreign Missionary Society, 
which already had increased its force to the number 
of four missionaries, including Heyer, Gunn, Martz 
and Cutter. Gunn died in 1851 and his place was 
taken by William E. Snyder. Valett resigned and re- 
turned to Germany. Heise and Cutter labored at 
Rajahmundry, Groenning and Snyder at Guntur and 
Heyer in the Palnad taluk. Luther’s Small Catechism 
was translated into Telugu and a small edition was 
published at Madras. A conference of missionaries 
was organized at Guntur on January 31, 1853, and 
Heyer was elected president. At its second meeting 
a year later this conference expressed the hope that 
all Lutheran missionaries in India might soon unite 
in.one general organization. The progress of the mis- 


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GRADUATES OF THE LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, RAJAHMUNDRY, INDIA, 
AND THEIR FAMILIES IN FRONT OF THE SEMINARY BUILDING AT LUTHERGIRI. 


Seventeen men were graduated in April and ordained in October, 1924. 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 33 


sion after ten years’ effort is revealed in the following 
table of statistics: 


Out- Com- 
Stations Stations municants Schools Pupils Teachers 
A SRRCCEE yest todas ee 1 35 7 146 10 
Rajahmundry ........... 2 14 8 225 9 
TSG ET PR Ra 10 36 % 85 6 
AR MURIS reac sciesyeseccecs 13 85 22 456 Hae 


Heyer became the resident missionary at Rajah- 
mundry in 1855, and remained there until he returned 
on furlough to America in 1857. Before that all the 
missionaries except Groenning, at Guntur, had left 
the field on furlough; but Snyder almost immediately 
came back to take charge of the educational work in 
the mission after the Indian government offered 
financial aid to the mission schools; and Heise re- 
turned to Rajahmundry in 1858. 

In Father Heyer, as he was and still is familiarly 
called, we have an incarnation of the inner unity of 
home and foreign missions. When he was not a for- 
eign missionary he served in the home mission field. 
He returned from the task of converting Hindus to 
Christianity to the no less arduous work of preaching 
the gospel to scattered and neglected Lutherans in 
Minnesota. In St. Paul he reorganized Holy Trinity 
Church. Then he went to Red Wing, later to Still- 
water, where he started St. John’s Church, and finally 
to New Ulm, where a brick church was built and con- 
secrated in 1860. Heyer was the leader in the organi- 
zation of the Minnesota Synod and for ten years he 
held the office of president. He was the delegate of 


34 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


this synod at the organization meetings of the Gen- 
eral Council in 1866 and 1867. 

During Heyer’s absence from India the Telugu mis- 
sion passed through a serious crisis. Snyder died 
of cholera in 1859, Heise resigned and left the field in 
1862. Groenning returned to Germany in 1865, Long 
died of smallpox at Rajahmundry the next year and, 
no new missionaries having been sent to take their 
places, the only one remaining in the field in 1867 
was Erias Unangst. Groenning, who had foreseen 
this dirth of missionaries, had turned to Louis Harms 
with an appeal for co-operation. The Hermannsburg 
Missionary Society of Germany, in 1865, sent out Rev. 
August Mylius. Instead of joining forces with the 
American Lutherans, however, the Hermannsburg 
Society preferred to start its own mission, and Mylius 
began the work of that society in India at Sulurpet 
and Nayadupet. 

Unable to supervise the work both at Guntur, where 
he resided, and at Rajahmundry, one hundred miles 
away, and thoroughly discouraged because the Foreign 
Missionary Society failed to supply sufficient funds, 
Unangst requested the Church Missionary Society’s 
missionary at Ellore to take charge of Rajahmundry 
and Samulkot. The Foreign Missionary Society not 
only approved his action but followed his further sug- 
gestion and offered the formal transfer of the Rajah- 
mundry field to the Church Missionary Society of 
England. 

Heyer was in Germany on a visit when he heard 
of these transactions and determined to preserve the 
Rajahmundry field for the Lutheran Church. After a 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 35 


number of conferences with Groenning and others in 
Germany and Denmark, he hastened back to America 
with Hans Christian Schmidt, who had volunteered 
to accompany him to India. He arrived in time to 
lay the whole matter before the Ministerium of Penn- 
sylvania at its meeting in Holy Trinity Church, Read- 
ing, Pennsylvania, in May, 1869. The unexpected ap- 
pearance of its intrepid pioneer foreign missionary 
and his address to the synod created a profound im- 
pression. Protesting most earnestly against the 
transfer of the Rajahmundry field as a breach of con- 
tract, he pleaded for the continuation of work in that 
field by the mother synod, which had sent him to India 
as the first foreign missionary of the Lutheran Church 
in America and had supported him throughout his 
entire career as a missionary in India. He introduced 
Schmidt to the synod as a pupil of Groenning, who 
was willing to serve in India. Then, reaching the 
climax of his appeal, he called for a decision. Some- 
one on the floor asked, ‘‘Whom can we send? To 
whom could we entrust this difficult task? Who will 
go for us?” Heyer arose, held up his traveling bag 
and said that he was ready to go at a moment’s notice, 
if the synod wished it, even though he was seventy- 
seven years old and it would be his third journey to 
the Far East. Such confidence did they have in him 
that the synod immediately resolved to send him on 
ahead of Schmidt and Becker, who were to follow 
as soon as possible and be guided by him in the re- 
organization of the mission. Heyer lost no time and 
four days after the formal transfer of the field from 
the Foreign Missionary Society to the Ministerium of 


36 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Pennsylvania, he sailed from New York on his third 
and last journey to India, this time by way of the 
Suez Canal. He reached Rajahmundry on December 
1, 1869. C. F. J. Becker joined him there in 1870, 
but died a few months after his arrival. Heyer car- 
ried on the work of reorganization alone, assisted by 
the Indian catechists, Tota Joseph and Nelaprolu 
Paulus, until Schmidt arrived in August, 1870, and 
Poulsen six months later. With two missionaries on 
the field, Heyer felt that his work was done and re- 
turned to the United States to report. After a brief 
period of service as house-father and chaplain of the 
theological seminary of the Ministerium of Pennsyl- 
vania in Philadelphia, Heyer fell asleep in Jesus on 
November 7, 1873, at the age of 80 years, 3 months, 
and 27 days. His Christian character, his missionary 
career, his varied and valuable service in the Church, 
distinguish Father Heyer as a faithful and zealous 
disciple of Jesus Christ, whose chief purpose in life, 
both in the home church and in the foreign field, was 
to do all that he could to fulfill the Saviour’s last great 
commission to His followers. Under his inspiring 
leadership our Church made its first fair start in the 
work of preaching the gospel in all the non-Christian 
world. His name has become an incentive to Luth- 
erans everywhere to aspire higher and higher, as time 
proceeds, toward the goal of doing their full share of 
service for the Christianization of the whole life of 
the world. 

The state of the Telugu mission in India which 
Heyer founded, at the time of his final departure from 
the field in 1871, after nearly thirty years of pioneer 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA . 37 


work, may be estimated from the following figures, 
those for the Rajahmundry section under the circum- 


stances being unsatisfactory. 
Indian Pupils 


Fields Missionaries Christians Workers in School 
CMSRBEIE cece huey eee caact 3 2150 56 400 
Rajahmundry .............. 2 160 9 138 

to cf pat x 2310 65 538 


GUNTUR FIELD MISSIONARIES 


The General Synod missionaries in the Guntur field 
and the General Council missionaries in the Rajah- 
mundry field made slow but steady progress during 
the next two or three decades, the former moving 
ahead somewhat more rapidly because of their larger — 
number, their better financial support by the home 
church and their more ambitious plans, especially in 
educational work. Unangst, after a furlough in 
America, returned in 1872, accompanied by John H. 
Harpster. Lemon L. Uhl joined them in 18738. Dr. 
Unangst spent thirty-eight years in mission service 
and retired in 1896. Like Heyer, he had some knowl- 
edge of medicine and used it to good advantage. Dr. 
Harpster spent his first term in the Palnad and dur- 
ing four years of service there he baptized 1,300 adults 
and children. Failing health forced his return to 
America; but after an interruption of seventeen 
years, during which he served pastorates in Hays 
City, Kansas; Trenton, New Jersey and Canton, Ohio, 
he went back to India, in 1893. From 1902 to the time 
of his death on furlough at Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, 
in 1911, he was a missionary in the Rajahmundry 
field under the direction of the Board of Foreign Mis- 


338 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


sions of the General Council. Dr. Uhl, who served 
for fifty years in the mission field with distinguished 
success both in evangelistic and pastoral work in the 
district and as supervisor of the schools in Guntur, 
now is living in deserved retirement with his 
daughter at Cambridge, Massachusetts. By his un- 
tiring efforts on furlough in the United States in 
1885, he succeeded in raising $18,000 for the erec- 
tion of the Arthur G. Watts Memorial College build- 
ing at Guntur. Before Dr. Uhl left India that year on 
furlough he handed over to Luther B. Wolf both the 
boarding and the high school for boys in Guntur; and 
Dr. Wolf in 1898 raised the grade of the high school 
to that of a junior college, affiliated with the Madras 
University. After a service of twenty-four years in 
India, Dr. Wolf, in 1907, became General Secretary of 
the Board of Foreign Missions of the General Synod. 

Other ordained missionaries who served before the 
merger in 1918, but who died or left the field are, in 
the order of their arrival in India: A. D. Rowe, 
Charles Schnure, W. P. Schwartz, John Nichols, John 
Aberly, George Albrecht, N. E. Yeiser, S. O. Kin- 
singer, Allen O. Becker, E. H. Mueller, E. C. Harris 
and C. Kemner. Of these Dr. Aberly, after a service 
of 33 years in India, became Passavant Professor of 
Missions in the Chicago Theological Seminary, and is 
now Professor of Systematic Theology in the Gettys- 
burg Theological Seminary. Dr. Albrecht is living in 
retirement in Germany. Dr. Becker is professor of 
missions in Wittenberg College and Theological Sem- 
inary, Springfield, Ohio, and Dr. Harris is pastor of 
the Lutheran Church in Sterling, Illinois. 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 39 


The first single missionary to be sent to Guntur 
was Miss Kate Boggs. Almost immediately after her 
arrival, in 1881, she was compelled to return to Amer- 
ica on account of failing health. Anna §S. Kugler, 
M.D., the second woman missionary, who arrived at 
Guntur in 1883, has lived and labored in India with 
occasional furloughs for over forty years. She is the 
founder and supervising doctor of the Guntur hospital 
for women and children, one of the best mission hos- 
pitals in India today. In 1904 she received from the 
Viceroy of India the silver Kaiser-i-Hind medal in 
recognition of her outstanding service as a medical 
missionary, and several years later the bar was added 
by the Indian government as a further decoration. 
Miss Fannie M. Dryden arrived in India the same year 
as Dr. Kugler and served in zenana and school work 
among women and children for about ten years. Miss 
Susan R. Kistler served seven years, Miss Amy L. 
Sadtler six years and was then married to Dr. George 
Albrecht. The women missionaries in zenana, school 
and medical work in the Guntur field up to the time 
of the merger who have died or resigned are: Jessie 
Brewer, who rendered thirty years of splendid edu- 
cational service before her death in 1924; Mary 
Knauss; Jeanne L. Rollier; Mary E. Lowe, who died 
on furlough in 1918; Elsie Reed Mitchell, M.D.; J. H. 
Wunderlich; Olga Brauer, R.N.; Tilda E. Nelson; 
Eleanore B. Wolf, M.D., second daughter of Dr. 
and Mrs. L. B. Wolf, who served one term of service 
as a medical missionary; Rebekah Hoffman, R.N., and 
Florence M. McConnel, R.N. Special mention in this 


40 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


connection should be made of Katherine Fahs, R.N., 
who has been in active service in the Guntur hospital 
since 1894. 


RAJAHMUNDRY FIELD MISSIONARIES 


Missionaries H. C. Schmidt and I. K. Poulsen la- 
bored patiently and hopefully side by side for seven 
years in the Rajahmundry field. After more mission- 
aries came and more money was supplied the work 
made more rapid progress. Poulsen left India in 1888. 
Schmidt remained at his station for thirty-three years 
until 1903, when he retired to live at Kotagiri, where 
he died in 1911. The first missionary to represent 
the Augustana synod was Rev. A. B. Carlson, who 
reached India in 1879 and died at Rajahmundry three 
years later. The Augustana synod has furnished in 
all eighteen missionaries for this field, nine ordained 
men and nine women, of whom one man and seven 
women still live. At first the contributions of this 
synod were small, but at the time of its withdrawal 
from the General Council, in 1917, it was contributing 
$30,000 a year and has continued to appropriate this 
amount each year, as an evidence of its loyal co-opera- 
tion. The other ordained men who served in the 
Rajahmundry field for longer or shorter periods but 
who have died or left the service are, in the order 
of their arrival in India: H. G. B. Artman, F. S. 
Dietrich, F. J. McCready, William Groenning, a son 
of one of the founders; E. Pohl, loaned for a while 
by the Breklum Missionary Society; E. Edman; C. F. 
Kuder, D.D., who devoted himself especially to the 
boys’ boarding school at Rajahmundry; Paul Baeh- 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 41 


nish; Rudolph Arps, who was forced to leave the field 
at the outbreak of the World War, because he was a 
citizen of Germany; H. E. Isaacson, D.D., who devel- 
oped the work at Samulkot; E. H. Mueller, afterwards 
at Guntur; P. Holler; G. B. Matthews, A. S. Ficht- 
horn; Fred. W. Wackernagel; Edward H. Trafford; 
Karl L. Wolters, who died at Rajahmundry in 1924; 
Osear L. Larson, O. O. Eckhardt; T. R. Beussel; 
F. W. Schaeffer; I. F. Witting, and Edwin A. Olson, 
who died of smallpox at Rawal Pindi, India, in 
1921. 

With the advent of single women missionaries in 
1890, a new era began for the work in the Rajahmun- 
dry field. The first to arrive were Agnes I. Schade 
and Kate L. Sadtler. The latter resigned after twelve 
years of service. The former has just retired after 
34 years of service, during which she established and 
developed the girls’ boarding school at Rajahmundry 
into one of the best institutions of its kind in the 
India mission field. Miss Charlotte Swenson, who 
was the first woman missionary representing the Au- 
gustana Synod, served in zenana work from 1895 to 
1908, when she died at Rajahmundry. Lydia Woerner, 
M.D., the first medical missionary at Rajahmundry, 
served twelve years, established the hospital for 
women and children and then was forced to resign on 
account of failing health as a result of blood poison- 
ing after performing an operation. Other women 
missionaries, who have died or left the service, are, 
in the order of their arrival in India: Martha Stremp- 
fer, who was married to Rev. W. W. Kennerly; Hedwig 
Wahlberg; Susan E. Monroe, who served 20 years at 


42 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


her own expense and died in 1923, at Mt. Airy, Phila- 
delphia, Penna.; Julia Van der Veer, M.D., who was 
married to Missionary Ernst Neudoerffer and died 
in India in 1907; Amy B. Rohrer, M.D., who was mar- 
ried to Missionary August Neudoerffer; Margaret C. 
Haupt, who was married to Missionary Oscar V. 
Werner; Anna E. Rohrer, now the wife of Rev. Ernst 
Neudoerffer; Virginia M. Boyer, who, after a term 
of service in the school for missionaries’ children at 
Kodaikanal, met a tragic death when the steamship 
on which she was returning to India, in 1922, sank 
after a collision at sea off the coast of France. 

It is not possible within the compass of this brief 
historical sketch to describe in detail the self-sacri- 
ficing and faithful work of all these missionaries; but 
what they accomplished under the blessing of God 
may be noted from the following table of statistics for 
the year 1918, the year in which the two India fields 
again were united in one mission: 


Fields Missionaries Indian Workers Christians Pupils 
A UIPLEMAL Yi) gctscdechos ects 43 1019 59,343 14,345 
Rajahmundry .... 31 642 26,037 12,000 
"LOtalS sites eacsviee 74 1661 85,380 26,345 


THE LURE OF INDIA 


That the first foreign mission field of the Lutheran 
Church in America should have been located in India 
igs not surprising. Those who called Dr. Christian 
Frederick Heyer and his successors to go to India 
were influenced not only by the appeal which Karl 
Rhenius in India had addressed to Lutherans in 
America and the recommendation of the American 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 43 


Board to choose the Telugu country, but also by the 
peculiar fascination which India for many centuries 
exercised on the minds of men. ‘From almost the 
dawn of history India has been the land of romance, 
the country of mystery, the lodestone of adventurers 
of every race,” writes a gifted author, who describes 
the lure of India in the following paragraphs: 

“Travelers who reached India brought back tales 
of its natural beauty, its ancient civilization, its walled 
cities, its marvelous temples and palaces, its rulers 
blazing with jewels at public festivals, until the wealth 
of India became proverbial. Because of their search 
after the fabled riches of a land, whose very sands 
were reported to be gold and diamonds, our own far 
greater and richer continent was discovered by 
Columbus. 

“As a matter of fact the wealth of India is like her 
famed civilization and learning, evident only in spots, 
and chiefly on the surface. The rajahs are covered 
with jewels, but all the jewels belong to the rajahs; 
they add nothing to the prosperity of the country. 
The temples and palaces stand in accusing contrast 
with the wretched huts of the poor. The luxuriance 
of royal gardens brings no help to the thousands 
who starve to death whenever a rainless season occurs. 
The learning of the priests is more than balanced by 
the illiteracy of the outcastes. 

“TIndia is and has been through the ages a country 
of sharp contrasts. Here are people who worship 
sacred cows and monkeys but hold human life cheap 
as dirt. Here stands a costly memorial to a dead 
woman, the Taj Mahal, perhaps the most beautiful 


44 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


piece of architecture in the world; and there on the 
highway toil living women, dragging burdens that 
would be heavy for beasts of burden. Here is a race 
that considers the gift of children as the most desired 
of all boons and a direct evidence of the favor of the 
gods, and yet is steadily destroying its own produc- 
tive power by child-marriage and unchecked infant 
mortality. Here are temples to gods who unblushingly 
are fabled as the authors of crimes for which men 
would be sent to jail. Here is the worship of 
learning and literature, with an utter indifference on 
the part of the learned toward popular education. All 
of these contrasts have been hardened in the mold of 
centuries, and only within the last few decades has 
that solid mass of ancient custom began to break.” 
India, with a population three times that of the 
United States in an area about half as large, is an 
agricultural country with only four great cities and 
700,000 villages. Into this mass of ignorant, diseased 
and superstitious hundreds of millions of human be- 
ings God has mingled the leaven of His gospel, which 
sooner or later is to permeate and transform the whole 
lump. How long it will take to christianize India 
no man can predict with any degree of certainty. 
According to the census of 1921 the total population, 
not including the island of Ceylon, was 318,942,480, 
of whom 4,754,079 were Christians. The Christians’ 
gain is 22.6 per cent. during the census period of ten 
years, which is very encouraging. When we remem- 
ber, however, that there are traditions concerning the 
Apostle Thomas as the first Christian missionary to 
India and concerning the missionary effort of Pan- 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 45 


taenus of Alexandria, Egypt, in the second century, 
and of Thomas, bishop of Edessa, in the year 345 A.D., 
and note that there exists to this day a group of Syrian 
Christians in the native state of Travancore, on the 
west coast, numbering about one-fifth of the entire 
Christian population of the peninsula, who call them- 
selves Thomas Christians, we are inclined to ask: 
“How long, O Lord, how long’”’ will this mass of non- 
Christianity resist Thy gracious, saving influence! 
Nestorians carried on considerable missionary work 
in India, as well as in China, for many centuries. Dur- 
ing the Middle Ages Roman Catholic missionaries 
from Europe, among whom Francis Xavier was the 
most conspicuous and zealous, made many converts; 
and there are today thousands of Roman Catholic mis- 
sionaries and hundreds of thousands of adherents of 
the Roman Catholic Church in India. Without question, 
the Protestant missionary movement, inaugurated in 
1705 by the Lutheran missionaries Ziegenbalg and 
Pluetschau and revived by William Carey in 1793, has 
made the deepest impression and promises the great- 
est and most far-reaching results for good in the 
peninsula. Among Protestant missions those of the 
Lutheran Church today form an important and influ- 
ential factor; and of the eight Lutheran missions 
there, those of the American Lutheran Church among 
the Telugus now have the largest number of converts 
and occupy an undisputed position of leadership. 


INDIA MISSION FIELDS 


The India mission of the United Lutheran Church 
in America consists of two fields, as already noted, 


46 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


separated by an intervening territory, in which the 
Church Missionary Society of England is at work, 
with Ellore as its main station. The Guntur field, so- 
called because the city of Guntur is the headquarters 
for the mission work, forms a part of the Madras 
presidency. This city also is the head station for the 
government of the Guntur district of the presidency. 
In it reside about two dozen English government offi- 
cials and merchants with their families. In addition 
to our Lutheran missionaries a small number of 
Roman Catholic missionaries live in Guntur. The 
population of the city is about 48,000, of whom prob- 
ably 8,000 are Mohammedans, 2,000 Christians and 
the rest Hindu. The city has several cotton and rice 
factories and is an important station on the Southern 
Maharatti railway, about 250 miles north of Madras 
and 80 miles west of the Bay of Bengal. The Guntur 
field extends to the north of the main station up to 
the winding Kistna river, to the west into the Palnad 
taluk (county), to the southeast as far as the shore 
of the Bay of Bengal, and to the south into the Cum- 
bum and Kanigiri taluks. The eastern taluks of this 
field are irrigated and very productive, and the popu- 
lation is dense; the western or upland taluks have 
fairly good soil and produce good crops when the rain- 
fall is sufficient; the southern taluks have poor soil 
and a comparatively scant population. The stations 
at which missionaries reside are, besides Guntur, 
Tenali, Chirala, Repalle, Narsaravupet, Sattenapalli, 
Rentichintala and Tarlupad. In and around these sta- 
tions the mission work is done by missionaries and 
Indian Christian workers, throughout a terr:tory as 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA AT 


large as thirteen American counties. The population 
of the field is over two millions, of whom seventy-five 
per cent. are Hindu, the rest being Mohammedans, 
Christians and Parsees. We must be careful always 
to distinguish between the designations: Hindu and 
Indian. The former designates the religion of the 
people as adherents of modern Hinduism, the latter 
their nativity or citizenship in India. Racially, the 
inhabitants of the Guntur, as well as of the Rajah- 
mundry field, are Telugus or Andhras, as they now 
prefer to be called. The Telugus are classified as 
Dravidians, who are to be distinguished from the 
Aryans of North India by their darker complexion, 
longer heads, more irregular features and shorter 
statures. Closely related to them are the Tamils who 
live to the south, among whom the Danish-Halle mis- 
sionaries began Protestant foreign mission work in 
India. The total Telugu population in India is 23,- 
500,000, of whom approximately 600,000 are Chris- 
tians. 

As elsewhere in the country the caste system pre- 
vails among the Hindus in our Telugu mission fields. 
At the top of the social scale are the priests and 
their families, the Brahmins. The men of this caste 
as a rule are well educated and until recently have 
held almost all positions of intellectual, political and 
religious influence. The bulk of the population con- 
sists of Sudras, who are the landowners, artisans and 
merchants. At the bottom of the social scale are the 
Pariahs, also known as the Panchamas, untouchables 
and outcastes, who do coolie work as day laborers 
and own little or no property. The curse of this caste 


48 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


system relates not so much to differences of occupa- 
tion as to the rigid lines of separation drawn between 
the castes, which nothing in life or death removes. 
Up to the present time most of the Christians have 
come from sections of the despised class, in South 
India principally from the Malas (agricultural labor- 
ers and weavers) and the Madigas (tanners and 
leather workers), which accounts for the poverty and 
lack of initiative in the indigenous Church; but there 
are clear signs of improvement in their condition and 
in their ideals, which is due to some extent to the 
education they have received in mission schools and 
to their moral and spiritual advancement as disciples 
of Jesus Christ. Christianity has given them a status 
which otherwise they never could have attained and, 
especially since Mahatma Gandhi has espoused their 
uplift, their social and political rights have received 
more recognition. In recent years the gospel has been 
reaching also certain classes of Sudras. As thus it 
penetrates Indian society upward, the strength, influ- 
ence, independence and self-support of the Christian 
Church will gradually increase. 

The Rajahmundry field, like the Guntur field, has 
its fertile, irrigated, productive and densely populated 
delta and coast regions, its less favored hill country 
and its comparatively barren dry lands. The climate 
is tropical. The thermometer rarely falls below 65 
degrees Fahrenheit during the three or four months 
of the cool season from October to February. In March 
winds from the south bring increasing heat until in 
May, the hottest month, the temperature rises to 115 
degrees and more in the shade. The wisest course 





GUNTUR, INDIA, HOSPITAL DOcToRS IN 1924. 


Seated: Dr. Anna S. Kugler, Dr. Paru, Indian surgeon. Standing: 
Misses D. Joshua and Borges, Vellore Medical School Graduates. 





MISSION VILLAGE SCHOOL EXAMINATION IN INDIA. 


The Telugu Christian teacher brought his school children to the landing 
place of the missionary’s house-boat. They were examined on the bank of 
the canal and each received a Bible picture card. 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 49 


for Europeans and Americans is to escape the intense 
heat by taking a vacation in the hills, the most popu- 
lar resorts for missionaries being Kodaikanal and 
Kotagiri. In June winds from the southwest bring 
rain-bearing clouds. The rainy season continues until 
the sun crosses the equator in September. After a 
month of practically no rain the northeast monsoon 
begins to blow and continues about a month with 
a varying quantity of rainfall. Tropical fruits and 
products abound in season in the rich land of the 
Godavery delta. Rice, sugar cane, tobacco, and cotton 
are extensively raised. The ordinary food of the 
people is rice or some form of millet. The monthly 
expenses of a family of middle class Telugus is fifteen 
rupees or about five dollars, though many of the poorer 
people live on half as much. 

The pursuit of agriculture occupies the attention of 
the majority of the people. The instruments and 
methods of cultivation are very primitive. The ordi- 
nary plow of the native farmer is nothing but a crooked 
piece of hard wood pointed at the end with a sharp- 
ened iron bar. This is pulled over the ground by a 
pair of oxen until the soil has been loosened several 
inches deep. At the time of harvest the ripened grain 
is cut down with a sickle, trodden out by cattle in the 
fields, winnowed in the wind, and carried in baskets 
on the heads or shoulders of the farm hands to the 
places of storage or market. The majority of farm 
laborers are practically serfs in the employ of wealthy 
land holders called zemindars, or they are in financial 
bondage to unscrupulous money-lenders. 


50 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


The home of the average villager is a mud-walled, 
thatch-roofed, earthen floored hut of one or two low 
rooms, in which frequently cattle, fowl and other do- 
mestic animals, as well as the members of a family, 
are housed. A few brass or earthen pots for cooking 
rice or storing water, and several mats, made of bam- 
boo or palm leaves, spread on the floor to serve as 
beds, are the only furniture. As a rule children wear 
no clothing until they are three or four years of age. 
For boys scanty garments, made from the cheapest 
cotton fabrics, are provided. The usual garment of 
the women is a single piece of cheap, light material, 
which they learn to wind and drape around the body 
from the shoulders to the ankles. Wealth and posi- 
tion are indicated by the number and value of jewels 
and other ornaments, which are worn especially on 
festival occasions. 

The lot of the woman in the Telugu country, as in 
all India, is deplorable. Many of them are unedu- 
cated drudges. Only the nautsch girls are educated, 
in order that they may provide entertainment. A 
woman has no social standing or religious destiny 
apart from her husband. The worst misfortune which 
can befall her is to remain unmarried. Matrimonial 
engagements are made by parents when their daugh- 
ters are still helpless babes. The age of matrimony 
usually is twelve years. Child-widowhood occurs when 
the boy or man to whom the infant daughter is to be 
married, dies before the wedding takes place. For 
such unfortunate girls marriage is forever forbidden 
and prostitution often follows. The practice of seclud- 
ing women in zenanas is not so common in South India 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 51 


as farther north, but it is in vogue among certain 
Sudra castes; and the Mohammedan portion of the 
population, in some instances, has preserved the 
harem. 

The Telugu language, enriched by Sanscrit and to 
a slight degree by Hindustani, Arabic, French and 
English, is musical in sound and elaborate in form. 
The vocabulary is enormous, abounding in synonyms 
and in terms of philosophical, pseudo-scientific, reli- 
gious and voluptuous character; but it is practically 
destitute of words which can be used to express the 
spiritual conceptions and moral standards of the 
Christian religion. The greater part of Telugu liter- 
ature is written in poetical forms. 

The original religion of the Telugus, as far as can 
be ascertained, was nature worship, coupled with 
animal worship, demon worship and hero worship. 
Many traces of animism still are to be found among 
them. The modern Hinduism, which they now prac- 
tice, is in principle the worship of nature as such and 
as a whole, and of deified forces of nature in particu- 
lar. The most popular gods are Krishna, an incarna- 
tion of Vishnu, whose worship allows licentious prac- 
tices and obscene pictures; Siva, the destroyer, and 
his consort, Kali, goddess of disease, disaster and 
death; Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of good luck; 
and Hanuman, the monkey god. So numerous are the 
images worshiped that their number is said to exceed 
that of the population. Temples and shrines are to 
be found everywhere on hills, under trees, near springs 
or rocks, on the banks of rivers and ponds, by the side 
of roads, in the streets of the towns and villages. At- 


52 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


tached to each temple and shrine is an attendant priest 
or priests, who receive the offerings of the people. 
Associated with this hydra-headed polytheism are the 
Buddhistic doctrines of illusion (maya), fate (karma), 
the transmigration of souls and the final absorption 
into the all-soul (nirvana). The absurd superstitions, 
the gross sensuality, the subtle dishonesty and the 
inhuman religious practices of modern Hinduism have 
left their indelible impression on the minds and lives 
of the people. The burning of widows on the funeral 
pyres of their husbands, hook swinging and similar 
barbarous practices have been prohibited by the Brit- 
ish government; but practices no less repulsive, per- 
formed by the priests in public and by fakirs for 
gain, are everywhere in evidence. Thus a religious 
fanatic may be seen lying naked on a bed of sharp 
spikes or walking in shoes through the soles of which 
sharp nails have been driven, or eating revolting food, 
or holding up a withered arm, or suffering some other 
form of self-torture, done in order to gain merit in 
the sight of the gods and to secure alms. 

Rajahmundry, the head station of the northern 
field, is the largest city in the Telugu country, having 
a population of 53,790. It is the ancient seat of an 
Indian rajah and always has been a recognized center 
of Telugu culture and literature. Situated on the left 
bank of the Godavery river, forty miles from the sea 
and 865 miles north of Madras on the railway from 
that city through Bezwada to Calcutta, it has become 
an important center of industry and commerce, the 
chief articles of trade being rice, tobacco, gall nuts 
and teak wood. 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 53 


The territory covered by the Rajahmundry field ex- 
tends from the shore of the Bay of Bengal inland 
along the banks of the Godavery river to the Rampa 
hills. It embraces approximately 5,400 square miles, 
which is somewhat larger than the state of Connecti- 
cut. This field is inhabited by more than three mil- 
lions of Telugus. Two other missions occupy parts 
of this territory, the Canadian Baptists with head- 
quarters at Coconada, and the Plymouth Brethren, 
whose center is Narsapur. Our missionaries have 
divided the field into districts, designated by the names 
of the towns in which they reside or by the names 
of the taluks in which they work, as follows: the 
Rajahmundry, Korukonda, Yelleswaram, Samulkot 
and Dowlaishwaram districts to the north and east 
of the Godavery river, and the Tallapudi, Tadepalli- 
gudem (Tanuku), Bhimawaram and Narsapur dis- 
tricts to the south and west of the river. 

To the Telugus of the Guntur and Rajahmundry 
fields in India the gospel has been preached for nearly 
eighty-five years by the missionaries of the United 
Lutheran Church in America and by the Indian Luth- 
eran pastors and teachers, who have co-operated with 
them in increasing number and influence, in order 
that the truth of Christ may triumph and His king- 
dom prevail among the Telugus. The missionary task 
will not be completed, however, until the Telugu Luth- 
eran Church that has been established becomes a self- 
supporting, self-governing, and self - propagating 
Church. 


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CHAPTER III. 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH 
GEORGE DRACH. 
INDIA AND LIBERIA, AFRICA 


INDIA 


“In union there is strength,” is an adage, the trutz 
of which has been demonstrated in the history of the 
India mission of the United Lutheran Church in 
America. Even before the merging of the general 
bodies in America into the United Church in 1918, the 
Guntur and Rajahmundry missions had cultivated a 
close relationship with each other as well as with other 
Lutheran missions in India. Beginning in 1895 the 
Lutheran missions in the Telugu country had held 
Joint Conferences at intervals of about two years, and 
in 1906 began to publish a joint magazine, The Gos- 
pel Witness. In 1908 the All-India Lutheran Con- 
ference was organized at Guntur as a representative 
body of all Lutheran missions and churches in the 
peninsula, and “The Gospel Witness” became the Eng- 
lish monthly magazine of this larger conference. The 
All-India Lutheran Conference and its official organ 
have cultivated the spirit of Lutheran solidarity and 
the opportunities of Lutheran co-operation. 

The Guntur and Rajahmundry missions co-operated 

55 


56 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


to a greater or less degree throughout their entire 
history along several lines of missionary work. A 
number of books of religious instruction were used in 
common by both missions; common courses of study 
and examination for Indian workers were pursued; 
several girls who had finished their studies in the 
girls’ boarding school at Rajahmundry were sent to 
the high school at Guntur. At various times there was 
an interchange of missionaries, as when Dr. J. H. 
Harpster went from Guntur to Rajahmundry, or one 
of the women physicians from Rajahmundry for a 
while lived and labored in the Guntur hospital. When, 
therefore, the merger of the general bodies in America 
was completed, the missions in India were ready to 
join forces and unite. Of course it took some time to 
work out the details of reorganization. At a joint 
meeting of all missionaries in March, 1920, a consti- 
tution was prepared, which was approved by the Board 
of Foreign Missions, and thereafter the united mis- 
sion functioned through the Council of the India Mis- 
sion of the United Lutheran Church in America. 
In this organization of missionaries those in indepen- 
dent charge of work, both men and women, have equal 
rights and privileges. Those not yet assigned to inde- 
pendent work, who are still engaged in the study of 
the vernacular, and wives of missionaries not in charge 
of assigned work, are given the privileges of advisory 
membership. The chief functions of the Council are 
official correspondence with the Board, the prepara- 
tion of the annual budget, involving the division of 
funds granted by the Board, so that each missionary 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 57 


gets his equitable share for his district or department, 
the control of appointments and appropriations to in- 
ter-mission activities, the supervision of mission insti- 
tutions of higher learning and mercy, plans for new 
work, for the inauguration of mission policies and 
for the development of established work. Under the 
direction of the Council an annual report is prepared 
for publication by the Board in America. An execu- 
tive committee attends to urgent ad interim business. 
Standing and special committees consider and make 
recommendations concerning the specific phases of 
work assigned to them. Each missionary in indepen- 
dent charge of work supervises it according to rules 
and regulations which are the product of many years 
of accumulated experience and wisdom. The entire 
organization of the mission, as well as of the bodies 
related to it, is based on democratic principles. 

It is natural, right and necessary that the adminis- 
trative functions of the organization of missionaries 
should be transferred as rapidly as possible to the 
organized Church in the mission field. The Guntur 
synod, organized in 1917, has control of all pastoral 
work and of primary schools in the villages. The 
Rajahmundry synod, organized in 1921, to which as 
yet only the pastoral work has been committed, is fast 
developing its ability of self-determination. The day 
is not far distant when these two synods will form a 
united general body with largely increased adminis- 
trative responsibility. The Council of the India Mis- 
sion, as the missionaries’ organization is called, at 
its meeting in April, 1925, expressed its willingness 
to transfer to the Indian United Church, when formed, 


58 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


the following departments of work for independent 
administration: (1) elementary schools, (2) higher 
elementary, middle and training schools for men, (3) 
Bible and theological training schools, (4) erection of 
houses of worship, schoolhouses and workers’ houses, 
(5) the annual examination of workers (6) publica- 
tions pertaining to the work of the synod, (7) dias- 
pora work, (8) budgets for work under the synod. 
The question of the transfer of certain parts of the 
women’s work to the United Church in India also is 
under consideration. 

The assumption and development of administrative 
responsibility in an organized Indian Church is inti- 
mately connected with the training of native ministers 
and with the organization of self-supporting congre- 
gations served by Indian pastors who have been called 
by them and whom they recognize and support as 
their spiritual teachers and shepherds. Within recent 
years the number of Indian pastors has been consider- 
ably increased. In 1919 there were 24 and the number 
of Indian workers of all grades was 2,400; in 1924 
there were 45 pastors and 3,365 workers. Only three 
Indian pastors were in charge of self-supporting con- 
gregations in 1924, the others serving in various ca- 
pacities under the supervision of missionaries. The dif- 
ferent grades of workers in the mission are as follows: 
school teachers, men and women teaching village pri- 
mary schools; Catechists, who are responsible for re- 
ligious work among Christians and others in one to 
four villages; evangelists, who devote the major por- 
tion of their time to work among non-Christians; 
school supervisors, qualified men who superintend edu- 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 59. 


cational work in a number of schools; and supervising 
catechists, who are assistants of the missionaries in 
their district work. Among the Indian workers are 
about 200 Bible women, who teach the Bible and cate- 
chism, Christian hymns and lyrics in home and mis- 
sion institutions. The foreign missionaries, including 
35 wives, in 1924, numbered 110. 

The Christian community in the India mission of 
the United Lutheran Church now numbers 121,000; 
but these numbers soon will be out of date because 
each year, for several years past, the net gain in mem- 
bership has been about 6,500, and it will steadily in- 
crease as the number of efficient Indian workers is 
multiplied. Moreover, significant progress has been 
made among the lower classes of Sudras. 


DEPARTMENTS OF MISSION WORK 


In order that we may understand how the Lutheran 
Church in our Telugu mission fields has reached its 
present stage of development, we need to review the 
progress of the work in its various phases and forms. 

From the beginning the evangelistic, pastoral and 
district missionary activity has been associated with 
educational efforts in mission schools, and both of 
these lines of endeavor have been followed with spe- 
cial reference to the establishment of an indigenous 
Church. Wherever a few Christians could be gath- 
ered and kept together as a congregation, regular 
preaching services and weekday meetings for the 
study of the Word of God and prayer were conducted 
either by the missionary or by some Indian worker. 
The mission now reports 1,303 congregations in 1,745 


60 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


towns and villages, having 49,000 adult communicants. 
Their common interests are administered by congre- 
gational church councils, which co-operate in repre- 
sentative field church councils, heading up finally in 
the organized Indian synod. Thus the spiritual care 
of souls, the development of Christian life and the 
discipline of the congregations are maintained. In- 
creasing emphasis is being laid on offerings for the 
support of the congregations, for benevolence and 
missionary work. In 1924 the benevolent contribu- 
tions of the Indian Christians amounted to Rs. 52,000, 
or about $17,000, while offerings in kind, consisting 
of rice and other food products and fruits, were 
valued at Rs. 10,500, or about $3,500. Other cash 
receipts, which included government grants for 
schools, students’ and medical fees, reached the sum 
of Rs. 262,000, or about $87,500, making a total in- 
come on the mission field amounting to $108,000. 

The number of mission and church buildings erected 
has increased rapidly during the past few years, so 
that now there are thirty bungalows for missionaries, 
fifty-five churches, 750 prayer and school houses, one 
college building, five high school plants, forty dormi- 
tories, called hostels, seven hospitals, as many dis- 
pensaries, and 430 workers’ houses. The value of this 
mission property is approximately one million dollars. 

The non-Christians in the mission field are reached 
with the gospel not only through the appointed church 
services which some of them attend, and the mission 
schools in which their children receive Christian in- 
struction, but also through special efforts on the part 
of evangelists and missionaries, when they go from 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 61 


place to place on their tours. Street preaching in 
towns and villages is constantly carried on, and Bible 
women also do effective village work. The usual 
methods of evangelistic work for reaching non- 
Christians are: to have a group of Indian workers 
sing a few hymns and lyrics, often accompanied by 
one or more musical instruments, or to set up a ster- 
eopticon in the evening and show Bible pictures, in 
connection with which Bible stories are told and the 
gospel is preached. During the celebration of the 
Diamond Jubilee, first in the Guntur field in 1917 and 
then in the Rajahmundry field three years later, ex- 
tensive tours were undertaken with selected bands of 
missionaries, Indian pastors, catechists, evangelists, 
Bible women and other workers, who spent several 
weeks traveling from village to village, everywhere 
preaching to large and interested audiences. 

The so-called zenana work is a combination of 
evangelistic and educational work, conducted under 
the supervision of women missionaries by Indian 
women, who visit homes in which women and chil- 
dren are instructed in Christianity and in useful oc- 
cupations. Our Indian Bible women, including those 
in the hospitals and dispensaries, teach thousands of 
women and children. Two afternoons a week usually 
are devoted to each home, with a varied schedule of 
instruction, which includes, besides Bible instruction, 
short periods in reading, arithmetic, geography, fancy 
work, plain sewing or some other helpful occupation. 
This kind of work was inaugurated by wives of mis- 
sionaries early in the history of the mission. Later it 
was placed in charge of single women sent to the field 
for that purpose. Its success depends entirely upon 


62 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


the number, character and efficiency of the Indian 
women who are trained for the work. The training 
school for Bible women in Guntur is the Mangala- 
mandiram (House of Blessing), of which Miss Jessie 
Brewer was the efficient manager at the time of her 
death in 1924. In Rajahmundry the proposed Char- 
lotte Swenson Memorial Institution, now being erected 
with funds furnished by the Augustana Women’s Mis- 
sionary Society, will include a department for the 
training of Bible women. 


MISSION SCHOOLS 


The educational work of the mission begins in the 
village primary school, an Indian adaptation of the 
parochial school, in charge of an Indian Christian 
teacher. The village school is supported in part by gov- 
ernment appropriations and is under government su- 
pervision. Fees are paid by pupils in all schools ex- 
cept the village elementary schools. Besides the sec- 
ular subjects, instruction is given daily in the Bible, 
the catechism, Christian hymns and lyrics. Lyrics, 
as distinguished from hymns, are songs set to India 
tunes. The primary schools are co-educational and are 
taught by either a male or female Indian teacher, the 
former preponderating in number. At the close of 
the year 1924 the number of pupils in mission pri- 
mary schools was reported as follows: Christian boys, 
8,421; non-Christian boys, 9,059; Christian girls, 
6,475; non-Christian girls, 4,715. Christian boys and 
girls who wish to continue their studies beyond the 
primary grades are taken into higher elementary or 
middle schools at mission stations, with which dormi- 
tories, called hostels in India, are connected. The girls 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 63 


who are received into central boarding schools at Gun- 
tur, Chirala, Repalle, Narsaravupet, Rentichintala, 
Sattenapalli, Rajahmundry, Samulkot and Bhima- 
waram constitute a somewhat smaller number of 
pupils than the boys in similar schools. It is much 
easier for a boy to continue his education in the mid- 
dle and higher schools than for the girl, because mar- 
riage for the non-Christian girl at twelve years of age 
means the end of all opportunity for study. Never- 
theless, there are 368 Christian and 155 non-Christian 
girls in the mission boarding schools, and twenty-eight 
Christian and four non-Christian girls are in the high 
school department of the Sylvanus Stall Girls’ School 
at Guntur. Four Christian girls attend the Bhima- 
waram high school in the Rajahmundry field. Now 
and then a girl aspires to a college education, which is 
provided in the inter-mission Women’s Christian Col- 
lege at Madras. Those who study medicine attend the 
Women’s Medical School at Vellore, another inter-mis- 
sion institution. 

The Girls’ Boarding Middle and High School at 
Guntur, called the Sylvanus Stall School because Dr. 
Stall contributed much of the money for the erection 
of the buildings, has had a remarkably successful his- 
tory. The Girls’ Central Boarding School at Rajah- 
mundry is the result of thirty-five years of faithful 
and efficient service on the part of Miss Agnes I. 
Schade. 

From the boarding higher elementary or middle 
schools at the various stations, which are under the 
general supervision of the resident missionary, ap- 
proved boys who desire to continue their studies are 
sent to the nearest mission high school. In the 


64 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Rajahmundry field high schools for boys are located 
at Peddapur, with an enrollment of 159 pupils, and at 
Bhimawaram, with an enrollment of 209. The Guntur 
high school for boys enrolls 378 pupils. Two higher 
grades, in which there are 271 students, correspond 
to the freshman and sophomore classes of college. 
The need for completing the college course in a mis- 
sion institution and the opportunity of combining the 
college departments of our Guntur junior college and 
of Noble College at Masulipatam, a Church Missionary 
Society institution, led to a plan for a united Christian 
college for the entire Telugu area. On the invitation 
of the Andhra Christian Council, a representative 
body of missionaries and Indian Christians from the 
Telugu or Andhra country, the United Lutheran 
Church in America now is engaged in an effort to 
secure $800,000 for the proposed Andhra Christian 
college, for which the Church Missionary Society has 
pledged a contribution of Rs. 50,000, or about $17,000, 
for capital expenditure, and the support of two col- 
lege professors, and the Wesleyan Methodist Mis- 
sionary Society of England has pledged the support 
of one professor. Other boards and societies having 
missions in the Andhra country sooner or later are 
expected to co-operate. The government of India will 
make appropriations for this college both in regard to 
buildings and running expenses, in accordance with 
its usual policy of granting one-half for capital ex- 
penditure and a similar proportion for current ex- 
penses. Until the new college can be established, 
Noble College at Masulipatam, of which Rev. J. Roy 
Strock, D.D., is principal, is serving temporarily as a 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 65 


United Christian College. Rev. Hiram H. Sipes is 
principal of Guntur College. 

Inasmuch as most of the Indian Christian workers 
are employed as teachers, Normal Training schools 
for men and women, called in India training schools 
for masters and mistresses, are conducted at Guntur 
and at Rajahmundry. Because the ultimate purpose 
of the higher educational work of the mission is the 
training of Indian Christian leaders, with special ref- 
erence to an increasing supply of qualified Indian pas- 
tors, the culmination of the mission’s educational work 
is reached in the theological seminary. A first class 
institution of this character still remains to be estab- 
lished and plans have been under discussion for many 
years to found a United Lutheran Theological Sem- 
inary, in which most of the subjects will be taught in 
English, and in which, therefore, Lutheran students 
from all language areas may receive theological in- 
struction. At Guntur and Rajahmundry Junior Bible 
Training schools have been and still are conducted for 
catechists and evangelists, who are unordained lay 
preachers. Rev. C. R. Gopal, B.D., is in charge of the 
Guntur Bible Training School. Since 1920 a three 
years’ course of systematic theological instruction has 
been furnished for the entire mission at Luthergiri 
(Hill of Luther), near Rajahmundry. Thirteen grad- 
uates of this theological school were ordained at Ra- 
jahmundry in April, 1924, and were then assigned to 
various fields and departments of labor. The pres- 
ent number of theological students in both the junior 
and senior classes is eighty-three. The missionaries 
who are serving as theological teachers at Luthergiri 
are Rev. Ernst Neudoerffer, Rev. J. E. Graefe, and, 


66 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


until his death in 1924, Rev. Karl L. Wolters. Their 
Indian colleagues are helping them to train an in- 
creasing number of men, qualified to serve as spiritual 
leaders of the Church in the mission field. 


MISSION INDUSTRIES 


An interesting phase of educational work in the 
mission, which is growing in importance, is that of 
industrial training. It always has been felt that this 
kind of training should be given in addition to the 
prescribed curriculum in mission boarding schools, 
and more or less successful efforts in a desultory way 
have been made in this direction from the beginning. 
More recently farm schools, industrial training schools 
and vocational middle schools have been discussed as 
desirable. In the interest of their economic develop- 
ment the mission assists Christians to receive gov- 
ernment grants of land through co-operative societies. 

There are mission printeries at Guntur and Rajah- 
mundry, in which Christians are employed, also book- 
stores at both stations. Dr. Victor McCauley super- 
vises the industrial instruction given in connection 
with the Guntur Orphanage and the Training School 
for Masters, over which he and Mrs. McCauley exer- 
cise supervision. Dr. McCauley, who has rendered 
efficient service as chairman of the building commit- 
tee, manages the carpenter shop, in which instruction 
is given in drawing, modeling and furniture making. 

The largest industrial work done in the mission is 
that of the lace industry, under the direction of Miss 
Charlotte B. Hollerbach in the Rajahmundry field and 
Miss Alice Nickel in the Guntur field. The beginning 
of this industry dates back as far as 1878, when the 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 67 


first lace made by the older girls of Mrs. H. C. 
Schmidt’s sewing classes was sent from Rajah- 
mundry to Philadelphia. In 1904, Mrs. J. H. Harpster 
introduced the industry in the Bhimawaram district. 
In 1921 it reached the point of self-support, giving 
employment to nearly 1,000 women. Those who have 
learned the art of lace making carry it on in their 
homes, from which the lace is collected each month. 
The lace makers are selected as far as possible accord- 
ing to their need of support, preference being given 
to widows, cripples, orphans, and mothers of children 
whose husbands are not earning enough to support the 
family. The sale of lace in America, under the direc- 
tion of a committee of the Women’s Missionary So- 
ciety, has a distinct educational value as well as a 
profitable income. 


MISSION HOSPITALS 


Medical mission work was begun in the India mis- 
sion by Anna 8S. Kugler, M.D., who arrived on the field 
in 1883. During the year 1884, Dr. Kugler treated 276 
patients in the home in which she lived and 185 in 
their own homes. While Dr. Kugler was waiting and 
pleading for suitable buildings for her medical work, 
the mission rented a number of houses in Guntur for 
use as dispensaries. Early in 1898 a mission dis- 
pensary building was completed and occupied and four 
years later the fine hospital plant at Guntur was 
erected, to which later additions were made, so that 
now it includes a main building, a maternity and oper- 
ating block, children’s ward, chapel and nurses’ home. 
In 1924 the hospital staff, besides Dr. Kugler, con- 
sisted of two Indian women doctors, graduates of the 


68 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Vellore Medical School; two missionary nurses, In- 
dian nurses, assistants and employees. The in-patients 
treated in the Guntur hospital numbered 2,000 and in 
dispensaries 11,575. 

A missionary’s wife has described the need of med- 
ical mission work as follows: “In India there is gen- 
eral ignorance and neglect in regard to the treatment 
of disease, and incalculable harm is done by malprac- 
tice. Severe diseases, such as cholera and smallpox, 
are attributed to the displeasure of angry gods and 
goddesses, who must be appeased. Elaborate and ab- 
surd ceremonies are performed, in the midst of which 
very often the patient dies. The native doctors hood- 
wink the people into believing in their powers to cure, 
and they do know the properties of a few drugs and 
herbs. But they have no knowledge of sanitation and 
preventive medicine, and they have no scruples about 
inventing the most cruel and outrageous treatment 
for sick persons, who place themselves in their care. 
It is a common thing for a native doctor to burn the 
flesh of a patient over the spot where pain is located. 
The patient suffers intense agony and the original 
pain is not removed. The flesh around the burn mor- 
tifies and gangrene sets in. Red pepper often is used 
in inflamed eyes, boiling oil is poured into open 
wounds, and mercury, which is very harmful in its 
effects, is an ordinary prescription. How closely 
superstition and disease are related in India may be 
seen in the common use of charms worn to ward off 
certain diseases. The helpfulness of the people is 
shown by their calm resignation to ‘fate.’ The Indian 
government has established hospitals and dispensaries 
in the large towns, and they do a great deal of good. 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—INDIA 69 


Their sphere is limited, however, and the women of 
the country are slow to take advantage of them.” 

The Guntur Training School for Nurses, under the 
supervision of Miss Katherine Fahs, who reached the 
field in 1894, has graduated over fifty Indian and 
Anglo-Indian nurses. Trained Indian doctors, also, 
both men and women, are now taking their places by 
the side of the American and European doctors in our 
mission hospitals and dispensaries. 

At Rajahmundry the medical mission work was es- 
tablished by Lydia Woerner, M.D., who, three years 
after her arrival in 1899, opened a dispensary in a 
rented house, and in 1911 completed the hospital build- 
ings, which were erected by the Women’s Missionary 
Societies of the Augustana Synod and General Coun- 
cil. Since 1915 this hospital has been in charge of 
Dr. Betty A. Nilsson, who reported in 1924 as many as 
1,317 in-patients treated and 7,800 patients at the 
dispensaries. Missionary nurses in this hospital also 
have conducted a training school for nurses. 

A third mission hospital for women and children 
was established in Chirala by Mary Baer, M.D., who, 
after a dispensary had been opened there in 1906, 
moved to Chirala from Guntur. The first hospital 
building was erected in 1910. The number of patients 
reported in 1924 was 5,300. 

At Rentichintala the mission established a general 
hospital in 1920 and three years later a similar insti- 
tution was founded at Tarlupad, where buildings now 
are being erected. Dispensaries are conducted also at 
Durgi, Nidadavol, Kotapad, Ravendrapad, Parvatipur 
and Salur. The total number of patients treated in 
these mission hospitals and dispensaries reached the 


70 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


impressive figure of 48,950 in 1924. It should be 
noted in this connection that hospital and dispensary 
work has its distinct evangelistic value. Bible women 
are constantly at work in the hospitals and dispensa- 
ries for women and children. Much is being done, 
also, by the distribution of Bibles, parts of the Bible 
and other Christian literature. Few leave the mis- 
sion hospital without some portion of the printed 
Word of God, for which they usually are willing to 
pay a small fee. 


THE JEYPORE FIELD 


When in 1914 the World War began and German 
missionaries were forced to leave their stations, the 
Schleswig-Holstein Missionary Society at once turned 
to the Rajahmundry mission for assistance, with the 
view of preserving its mission work in the Jeypore 
field through the service of American Lutheran mis- 
sionaries and the contributions of their home constit- 
uency in America. The Board of Foreign Missions 
of the General Council and, after the merger, that of 
the United Lutheran Church in America, assumed 
full responsibility for the Jeypore field, with the un- 
derstanding that as soon as the way opened for the 
German missionaries to return to India, this field 
would be restored to them. More than ten years have 
passed since the war began and more than seven 
years since the armistice was signed, and still this 
field remains under the care of the United Lutheran 
Church, which has spent over $250,000 for its preser- 
vation during this period. At first one of the Rajah- 
mundry missionaries, Rev. Ernst Neudoerffer, period- 
ically visited the Jeypore field; later several became 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—AFRICA 71 


resident missionaries at various stations. In 1924 
seven ordained missionaries and two single women 
missionaries were stationed at Jeypore, Kotapad, 
Koraput, Parvatipur and Salur. Two of the married 
ordained men are returned former Schleswig-Holstein 
society missionaries, Rev. Anders Anderson and Rev. 
Hans Toft, who as citizens of Denmark and repre- 
sentatives of the North Schleswig constituency of the 
Schleswig-Holstein Society, were allowed by the Brit- 
ish government, in 1924, to go back to India in the 
service of the Board of Foreign Missions of the United 
Lutheran Church. It is expected that in 1926 the 
British government will restore to the German mis- 
sionary societies the privilege of resuming work in 
their India mission fields, and then a part or all of the 
Jeypore field will be returned to the Schleswig-Hol- 
stein Missionary Society. 

The United Lutheran Church in America has as- 
sisted also the Gossner Autonomous Lutheran Church 
in Chota Nagpur by giving, since 1920, the service of 
several of its missionaries in India to supervise the 
work among the Kols. Those now resident at Ranchi 
are Rev. and Mrs. Isaac Cannady and Rev. and Mrs. 
Oscar VY. Werner, who will be withdrawn as soon as 
possible after the Gossner Missionary Society of Ger- 
many has been allowed to resume charge of this im- 
portant field. The National Lutheran Council of 
America has furnished funds for its preservation 


since 1920. 
LIBERIA, AFRICA* 


Liberia, a little patch of country about the size of 
the state of Ohio, is situated on the west coast of 
Africa. It is the only negro republic in the world. 









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It was founded as an asylum for freed slaves. In the 
early part of the nineteenth century most of the 
negroes in North America were slaves, dependent for 
everything on the white man who owned them. A 
few were set free by well-meaning masters or pur- 


* Some of the material and language of this part of the chapter has been 
taken from the story of the American Lutheran Mission in Liberia, written 
by Augusta Shaffer Pohlman and Margaret R. Seebach, published as a 
pamphlet by the Women’s Missionary Society of the United Lutheran Church 


in America. (See Bibliography.) 
72 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—AFRICA 73 


chased their liberty at great sacrifice. Their lot was 
deplorable. They were not accepted as equals either 
by the white man or by their fellow black men. Their 
labor was valued at a discount; their ignorance and 
poverty made life a pitiable struggle. In the Amer- 
ican life of that day, previous to the Civil War, there 
was no place for free negroes. To men of thoughtful 
mind it appeared that the negro would be better off 
on his native continent, and colonization societies were 
formed in Washington, Philadelphia, New York and 
Boston for the purpose of securing in Africa a home 
for freed slaves and captured Africans who were 
taken from slave-traders by American warships. 

In 1820 a band of about eighty negro colonists from 
America, led by three white men, landed on Sherbro 
Island, where in a few weeks all of the white men and 
a fourth of the negroes died of fever. The next year 
another colony went out, found the remnants of the 
first band and settled on a strip of the coast southeast 
of Sierra Leone, purchased by the American Coloniza- 
tion Society from the Vai tribe. Into this territory 
came other colonists from America, and on July 26, 
1847, the country was proclaimed a republic, called 
Liberia, with a government modeled on that of the 
United States of America. Its capital at the mouth of 
the St. Paul River was called Monrovia in honor of 
President Monroe. The motto of the republic is, ‘“The 
love of liberty brought us here.” 

Today the descendants of these American freed 
slaves, who are the only people claiming the title of 
Liberians and who still occupy the coastland, number- 
ing about 35,000, hold all the public offices and form 
the body of voting citizens. In the interior live the 


74 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


primitive negroes, who have never left the country 
and who, divided into many tribes, number nearly 
1,500,000. 

The establishment of this republic awakened new 
interest in the christianization of Africa. Morris 
Officer, then a student at Wittenberg College, Spring- 
field, Ohio, offered to go to Liberia as a missionary, if 
the American Lutheran Church would send him. The 
response to his proposal was not encouraging. There- 
upon he made an arrangement with the American Mis- 
sionary Society of New York to go to Africa under 
its auspices with the understanding that, if he should 
find a favorable place for the establishment of a mis- 
sion and could persuade the Lutheran Church to take 
it up, he would be free to do so. He reached Sierra 
Leone in 1851, and during a period of a year and a 
half he explored a portion of Liberia, following the St. 
Paul River from Monrovia into the interior. Return- 
ing to America he urged the General Synod at its 
meeting in 1854 to establish a mission in the region 
which he had explored. Interest was lukewarm, but 
the General Synod authorized him to gather funds for 
the establishment of a training school for negroes in 
America, in which workers were to be prepared for 
the proposed mission in Liberia. In 1859 the Gen- 
eral Synod went a step farther and resolved to use 
the funds gathered by Officer, amounting to about 
$3,000, for the immediate establishment of the 
mission. 

Leaving his wife and children in America, Officer 
and his first associate, Rev. Henry Heigerd, sailed for 
Liberia in February, 1860. They traveled about 
twenty-five miles inland on the St. Paul River to Mills- 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—AFRICA 75 


burg, and a few miles farther up they located the first 
mission station, which they called Muhlenberg in 
honor of the great Lutheran pioneer in America, 
Henry Melchior Muhlenberg. During the first months 
of their residence at this station their time was fully 
occupied with clearing away the tropical bush and 
building small houses for their habitation and for 
chapel and school purposes. 

In August, 1860, two slave ships, carrying about 
1,500 Africans from the Congo, were captured by 
United States cruisers off the coast of Liberia. Officer 
went to Monrovia and secured twenty boys and as 
many girls from these ships, took them up the river 
in boats and undertook to educate them at the mission 
station. A missionary of another church, Miss Kil- 
patrick, was induced to come to the station and take 
charge of the girls. Later she was married to Rev. 
Mr. Heigerd. The descendants of these first mission 
school children still are called Congoes. 

Officer was obliged to leave Liberia in 1861, and his 
health never justified his return to the field. The 
Heigerds returned to America in broken health after 
a period of service, which lasted a little over four 
years. The next years showed a monotonous record 
of one or two years of service in the field by the mis- 
sionaries sent from America, each ending abruptly 
with “returned” or “died in the field,” written after 
the missionary’s name. 

Liberia lies five degrees north of the equator on that 
deadly west coast of Africa long known as ‘“‘the white 
man’s graveyard.” The humidity is so great that dur- 
ing the rainy season scarcely any article not kept in 
tins remains free from mold. The uncut jungle 


76 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


abounds in insects, among them the malaria-breeding 
mosquito. The total lack of sanitation in the villages 
adds to the danger of infection, and the heat of the 
sun without careful precautions produces sunstroke. 
Those who first went to this country as missionaries 
literally took their lives in their hands; but now by the 
daily use of quinine, other preventive measures and 
medical treatment, the health of the missionaries is 
well preserved. Nevertheless, the term of service in 
the field has been reduced to twenty-seven months, 
with a furlough period of nine months, including the 
voyage in both directions. 

The chief physical difficulty connected with mission 
work in Liberia is the poor and primitive method of 
travel and transportation. In the jungles lurk wild 
beasts. Crocodiles infest the rivers. The bush paths 
are so narrow that one cannot easily open an um- 
brella in them. All goods are carried on the heads or 
backs of native men. The missionary walks or is car- 
ried in a hammock by bearers. To cross a stream he 
uses the native bridge, which consists of a log or of a 
shaky contrivance of ropes, or a raft or a canoe, or 
rides on the shoulders of native carriers. What these 
transportation difficulties mean to the missionary in 
waste of time and energy can scarcely be imagined by 
one who has not been in this mission field. The mis- 
sionaries often have asserted that the building of a 
number of good roads into the interior would be a 
justifiable missionary undertaking and a wonderful 
missionary asset. 

In spite of the fertility of the soil, there are many 
“hungry times” in Liberia, because of the inadequate 
methods of farming. The natives simply clear a small 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—AFRICA 77 


patch with cutlasses, and then burn over a piece of 
land. After scratching the soil with a rude hoe to 
the depth of an inch or two, they deposit the seed. For 
fear of wild beasts and hostile tribes, who formerly 
carried on incessant warfare, the people in the in- 
terior live in little native towns, built in small clear- 
ings in the bush. Their small thatched huts, bare of 
all conveniences, are used merely for shelter, all cook- 
ing being done in common village kitchens or out-of- 
doors. The men despise manual labor. The women 
do most of the work, so that a girl is a valued pos- 
session and is sold for as high a price as her father can 
extort. Polygamy is a common practice. 

The only form of systematic education known to the 
primitive interior negroes is that of the “devil bush” 
for boys and the corresponding “gre-gre bush” for 
girls. These are periods of retirement in the jungle, 
during which some of the young people, carefully sep- 
arated, learn their primitive trades of metal and 
leather working, weaving and basketry, and all are 
instructed in native customs and religious practices 
under the direction of the witch doctor for the boys 
and of the zo-devil for the girls. After leaving these 
places, where they usually stay for several years, the 
boys and girls are supposed to be prepared for mar- 
riage and are admitted into the eta societies of 
their tribes. 

The religion of the interior tribes is animism, the 
lowest of all forms of worship. They cultivate belief 
in fetishes and charms, and the worship of the spirits 
that are supposed to dwell in all natural objects, in the 
river, the bush, the air, in fire, in weapons, utensils 
and animals. Especially do they worship and put 


78 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


their trust in the spirits of their dead. Fear, suspicion, 
hate, revenge are the attitudes of mind towards the 
spirits to whom they pray. 


DAvip A. DAY 


When it seemed as though the beginnings made in 
Liberia were to end in failure, God sent a man whom 
He had prepared in the school of adversity, endowed 
with spiritual power and great endurance. For 
twenty-three years he labored as a missionary in 
Liberia and wrought so effectively that he held the 
hearts of the jungle people in his hands. This man 
was David A. Day, and by his side labored his devoted 
wife, Emma V. Day, who went out with him in 1874 
and for twenty-one years was ‘‘Ma’”’ to all the natives 
for miles around—a lone woman missionary, whose 
praise will be sung by all who have anything to do 
with the American Lutheran mission in Liberia. The 
mission work had to be begun all over again. The 
buildings had fallen into disrepair, the children had 
been scattered, the surrounding villages had lost in- 
terest in the mission. Dr. Day built a new home for 
himself and his wife, and new school buildings. He 
again started the planting of the mission land and 
made the mission boys partners in the enterprise of 
raising palm nuts and coffee. He secured a grant of 
590 additional acres of land from the government and 
procured an outfit for manufacturing sugar cane. He 
established a blacksmith, carpenter and machine shop, 
where the boys could learn these trades. He directed 
native workmen in the construction of a small steam- 
boat to run from Millsburg to Monrovia, the first 
steam craft that ever navigated the St. Paul River. 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—AFRICA 79 


The engine was shipped from America, all the other 
parts of the boat were made at the mission station. 

Year in and year out Dr. and Mrs. Day carried the 
gospel by word and example as far as they could into 
the surrounding villages. Their three children, two 
born in Liberia and one in America, each in turn were 
laid in their little graves in the mission cemetery. 
High hopes were raised by the coming of reinforce- 
ments, among them the first medical missionary, E. 
M. Hubler, M.D. These hopes, however, were quickly 
dispelled as one after the other succumbed to fever 
or returned to America in broken health. For a num- 
ber of periods, one of nearly three years, no mission- 
ary was on the field. When Dr. Day came home on 
his last furlough, though only forty-two years of age, 
he was an old man physically, racked and worn by his 
sufferings and labors. On his return to the mission 
field his brave wife came home to America to die, send- 
ing him in her last days this message, “Do not come 
home. Africa needs you more than I do.” About two 
years later Dr. Day did go home, dying on the return 
voyage to America, a day before the steamship 
Lucania reached New York, on December 17, 1897, 
leaving as a challenge to the Church his dying words, 
“Close up the ranks!” Every year on the anniversary 
of his death the professors and students of Susque- 
hanna University hold a memorial service at his grave 
in Selinsgrove, Pa. 

The next fifteen years formed a period of crisis in 
the history of the mission. The missionaries realized 
that in the interior better opportunities for per- 
manent work awaited them, and about eight or ten 
schools were started at different places in the hinter- 


80 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


land, most of them to be abandoned in a few years for 
lack of workers or because of hostility on the part of 
the natives. The question was seriously considered at 
home, whether it was right to sacrifice so many lives 
in an effort which seemed to promise so little. The 
reply of the missionaries was: “No note of retreat has 
ever been sounded by a voice from the field. No de- 
sire to abandon the mission has ever been expressed 
by any one of us.” 


INTERIOR STATIONS 


The first successful effort to establish an interior 
station was made in 1908 by Rev. J. C. Pedersen at 
Kpolopele. With the help of native boys he built a 
house of clay cement, which was the wonder of the 
natives. People for miles around came to see it and 
their chiefs begged the missionary to build such houses 
for them. This station was served by Pedersen for 
about nine years and still is one of the four interior 
stations of the mission at which missionaries reside. 
The others are Sanoghie, opened in 1917 by Rev. and 
Mrs. J. D. Curran; Bethel, opened by Rev. and Mrs. C. 
E. Buschman in 1921; and Zorzor, opened in 1923 by 
Rev. and Mrs. G. C. Leonard. Zorzor is the farthest 
interior station, being only a few miles from the 
boundary line of French Guinea and about 150 miles 
from the sea coast. The mission now claims as its 
field the territory lying between the Loffa and St. John 
Rivers from the coast to the border. 

A remarkable but absolutely necessary achievement 
has been the reduction of the Kpele language to writ- 
ing. In 1914 the Board of Foreign Missions employed 
Dr. Diedrich Westerman, a distinguished German 


€ 


‘VOINAV ‘VINAAIT 


SaldVd ‘IOOHOS STYID AVG “A VNWNG 


‘ 








TWO GRADUATES OF A CHRISTIAN GIRLS’ 
SCHOOL IN JAPAN. 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—AFRICA 81 


philologist, to help the missionaries to prepare a gram- 
mar and dictionary in Kpele. Rev. G. C. Leonard de- 
voted much of his time to the study of this vernacular 
and translated the Gospel of St. Mark, which has been 
printed by the American Bible Society. All new mis- 
sionaries now must spend at least six months at an 
interior station in the study of Kpele. Earnest efforts 
also are being made to provide sufficient theological 
education to a number of native men to enable them to 
minister to their fellow tribesmen as evangelists or 
ordained pastors. With the development of the in- 
terior work evangelistic effort must be considerably 
increased and the prospects of establishing indigenous 
congregations and of eventually organizing a native 
church are growing brighter year by year. The bap- 
tized membership in 1924 was 500, and 340 were adult 
communicants. Most of those educated in the schools 
at the main stations, on their return to their native 
settlements, have joined already existing congrega- 
tions of other denominations. The native workers 
number only thirty-six. The real problem of the mis- 
sion is the increase of qualified native teachers, evan- 
gelists and pastors. 

Up to the time of the opening of interior stations, 
practically all the work of the mission was confined to 
the boarding schools for boys and girls at the main 
station. At first both boys and girls were instructed 
in one school. Dr. Day saw the necessity of separate 
schools, but not until after his departure, in 1898, did 
Missionaries Pohlman and Beck carry out his plan 
and locate the girls’ school on the opposite side of 
the St. Paul River in the house which Dr. Day had 
built as his residence. At the same time the first 


82 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


white women missionaries, Sister Augusta Shaffer, 
who later was married to Dr. A. Pohlman, and Miss 
Van Leer, reached the field. They and their work 
were supported by the Women’s Missionary Society, 
as were all other single women missionaries subse- 
quently sent to Liberia. For the purposes of the school, 
called the Emma V. Day Girls’ School in honor of Mrs. 
Day, this society has provided the splendid building 
which was completed in 1924 at a total cost of $75,000. 
It is constructed of iron, cement, and lumber imported 
from America during and after the World War, which 
accounts for the comparatively large expenditure. A 
similar building for the boys’ school is contemplated. 
Both of these boarding schools are conducted as gram- 
mar schools up to the eighth grade, modeled after the 
public schools in the state of Pennsylvania. The usual 
enrollment in each school for a number of years has 
been approximately 150. Industrial training has been 
given in addition to the class-room instruction, chiefly 
in handicrafts and now also in agriculture; and for a 
number of years a very flourishing and productive 
coffee farm was cultivated. Some of the boys have 
learned the tanning of hides and shoemaking, others 
have been employed in the mission tailor shop or in 
the carpenter shop or in the printery. At the Emma 
V. Day school all the clothing worn by the girls is 
made by them. They also do the housework, care for 
the grounds of the school and do considerable farm 
work. The boys and girls who complete the prescribed 
course in school and desire to be teachers are given a 
normal-school training. Several girls have become 
nurses. 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—AFRICA 83 


At each interior station a mission school is con- 
ducted for boys and, wherever possible, also one for 
girls, in which, besides the rudiments of knowledge, 
the principles of Christianity are taught. 

An event of deep interest to the missionaries and of 
great significance to the mission occurred in 1921, 
when one of the general secretaries of the Board of 
Foreign Missions, Rev. Charles L. Brown, D.D., visited 
the mission field. He reached the main station on No- 
vember 8, that year, after having inspected the neg- 
lected work of the German missions in the Tanganyika 
territory of equatorial East Africa, as the special com- 
missioner of the National Lutheran Council, which 
was planning to preserve what was left of these mis- 
sions after the ravages of the World War. On his 
journey into the interior of Liberia, Dr. Brown was 
stricken down with fever and died at Sanoghie on De- 
cember 5, 1921. Rev. Charles E. Buschman, who ac- 
companied him on this tour of investigation, suc- 
cumbed ten days earlier from the effects of sunstroke. 

These were the first deaths in the mission field for 
a period of almost seven years, although some of the 
missionaries had been obliged to leave the field on ac- 
count of impaired health. The need of doctors and 
nurses, which always had been deeply felt and to some 
extent supplied, was greatly emphasized by the deaths 
of Secretary Brown and Missionary Buschman. A 
fine hospital has been erected near the girls’ school, 
with funds provided by the Women’s Missionary So- 
ciety, and dispensary work is being done at the boys’ 
school by the hospital doctor, and at all interior sta- 
tions by missionary deaconesses with medical training 
and by trained nurses in the absence of available med- 


84 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


ical missionaries. At present George Mynchenberg, 
Jr.. M.D., is in charge of Phoebe Hospital at the 
main station. Rev. E. O. Lape, M.D., at Zorzor, is 
practicing medicine as well as doing evangelistic and 
educational work. Several medical students in Amer- 
ica are preparing for service as medical missionaries 
in Liberia. Going to West Africa no longer means 
signing one’s death warrant, as it seemed to do in 
the earlier days of the history of the mission. The 
number of missionaries steadily has increased since 
the merger in America, in 1918, and there are now in 
Liberia eight ordained missionaries, of whom six are 
married, one unordained single missionary builder, 
one unordained single missionary business manager, 
one unordained agricultural missionary, one married 
missionary doctor, nine single women missionaries 
and two missionary nurses, making a total force of 
thirty-one missionaries. The budget of this mission 
in 1925 called for an outlay of $51,000, including sal- 
aries and traveling expenses of missionaries. 


CHAPTER IV. 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH 


GEORGE DRACH 
JAPAN, SOUTH AMERICA, CHINA, HOME BASE 


JAPAN 


Centuries ago adventurers who sailed the seas 
brought back to the West thrilling tales about people 
hidden away on islands in the waters of the Pacific 
Ocean, far away toward the rising sun. These island 
people resented discovery and jealously guarded their 
shores from the intrusion of foreign feet and their 
land from the sight of spying eyes. Portuguese 
traders in 1542 and Dutch traders in 1611 found these 
islands and were allowed to slip in their cargoes of 
merchandise for barter. The Portuguese also brought 
Jesuit missionaries, headed by Francis Xavier in 1549, 
who taught the learning and religion of the West, and 
who are said to have made 280,000 converts to Chris- 
tianity in Japan. After years of feverish effort to 
control the activity and moderate the influence of the 
Roman Catholic missionaries and traders, Japan 
slammed her door shut with a bang, forbade all for- 
eign intercourse and returned to her hermit life. Two 
hundred and fifty years passed before the door again 
was opened. 

In 1853 Commodore Matthew C. Perry, of the 
United States Navy, anchored his little fleet of war- 

85 


86 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


ships in Uraga Bay, not far from Yokohama. The 
result of his negotiations was that Japan’s isolation 
ended. In 1854 the rasping of rusty bolts and creak- 
ing of unused hinges announced to the world that the 
doors again were swinging open.* 

Protestant missionary work in Japan started as the 
very humble beginning of a small group of Amer- 
ican and British missionaries who settled in the open 
treaty ports in 1859 and during the succeeding 
decades. The first Lutheran missionaries, Rev. J. A. 
B. Scherer and Rev. R. B. Peery, arrived in 1892. 
After a short residence in Tokyo, they went to Saga 
on the southern island, Kyushu, and there opened the 
mission of the United Synod in the south. They 
brought with them from Tokyo Mr. Rychei Yama- 
nouchi, a Japanese Christian evangelist, who later was 
ordained. Dr. Scherer accepted a position as teacher 
in a government school and Dr. Peery taught in the 
night school which he and Mr. Yamanouchi conducted 
in Saga. 

In 1898, Dr. and Mrs. Charles L. Brown reached the 
field. They settled first at Saga to learn the language. 
In December, 1900, they moved to Kumamoto to open 
the second station of the mission. At the same time 
Rev. J. M. T. Winther, the first missionary of the 
United Danish Church of America, went to Kurume. 


Kumamoto is famous as the city in which one of the 
first Christian student movements originated through 
the efforts of Captain L. L. Janes, a Christian army 
officer, formerly an instructor in the United States 
Military Academy at West Point. Captain Janes was 





* “Japan On the Upward Trail,” by William Axling. 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—JAPAN 87 


invited by the feudal lord of the district of Kumamoto 
to become a teacher. After five years of teaching there 
occurred in January, 1876, one of the momentous 
events in-the history of Christianity in modern Japan. 
Just before sunset forty of his students, marching to 
the rhythm of Christian songs, climbed the hill over- 
looking the city of Kumamoto. Having reached the 
crest, they formed a circle and knelt. While the hush 
of evening settled down upon them, with prayer and 
praise, twenty-eight signed the “‘Hanaoka Declara- 
tion,” in which they solemnly covenanted to dedicate 
their lives to the high task of making Christianity 
known throughout the empire. Under the stress of 
tears, pleadings, threatenings, withdrawal of funds, 
imprisonment, ostracism and banishment, a few of the 
original Kumamoto band renounced their Christian 
faith. Thirty or more, however, remained true and 
several of them became great and influential Japanese 
Christian teachers and leaders. 

Kumamoto is the main station of the American 
Lutheran mission in Japan, though Tokyo, the great 
capital of the empire, promises to rival it in importance 
now that the theological seminary has been estab- 
lished there and has begun to fulfill its function in the 
mission. In 1911, Dr. Brown erected the first build- 
ings of Kyushu Gakuin, the mission’s middle school 
for boys at Kumamoto, and admitted the first class of 
students. Funds for this school had been raised in 
America from 1906 to 1908 by Dr. Brown while on 
furlough, and by Rev. A. J. Stirewalt in 1910, the con- 
gregations of the United Synod in the South by that 
time having developed a keen interest in the enter- 
prise. Additional buildings were supplied during the 


88 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


succeeding years and higher classes were added. To- 
day the school is a well-equipped institution with 
thirty-three teachers, of whom twenty are baptized 
Christians. It enrolls 625 students. The Japanese 
dean of Kyushu Gakuin from the beginning has been 
Dr. 8S. Toyama. The missionaries in charge have 
been Dr. Charles L. Brown, Rev. A. J. Stirewalt and 
Dr. L. S. G. Miller. The chaplain of the school is Rev. 
H. Inadomi, who also serves as pastor of Kyushu 
Gakuin congregation. Graduates of this school are 
now among the leaders in the Lutheran Church in 
Japan, and some of them occupy high and responsible 
government positions. The proportion of students 
baptized during their attendance is exceptionally high. 
Of the 580 graduates up to 1924, one hundred and 
thirty-five left the school as baptized Christians. Even 
though many do not embrace Christianity, they learn 
to appreciate its spirit and respect its teachings and 
become friendly in their attitude towards Christianity. 
As a lasting memorial to its founder, there has been 
erected on the campus, at a cost of $35,000, the Brown 
Memorial Church. The Brotherhood of the United 
Lutheran Church in 1924 provided the last wing of 
the dormitory at a cost of $3,500. 

In connection with Kyushu Gakuin a theological de- 
partment was conducted from the beginning of its 
existence until, in the fall of 1925, some of the new 
buildings of the Tokyo Theological Seminary were 
completed and occupied. For one of these buildings, 
a professor’s house, the Luther League of the State of 
New York provided $5,700. The missionary in charge 
of the Tokyo Theological Seminary is Rev. J. P. Niel- 
sen, who was sent to Japan by the United Danish 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—JAPAN 89 


Church in 1909. His missionary associates are Rev. 
John K. Linn and Rev. Edward T. Horn. The Japanese 
professors are Rev. I. Miura, 8S. Sato and N. Asaji, all 
of whom spent some time as students in American 
theological seminaries. 

On the outskirts of Kumamoto is located the Girls’ 
School, for which the Women’s Missionary Society 
of the United Lutheran Church has _ provided 
$175,000. The buildings, just erected, are splendidly 
adapted for the purposes of the school. Miss Martha 
B. Akard, who went to Japan in 1914, and for ten 
years served in kindergarten and evangelistic work, 
has been appointed as the missionary in charge of the 
girls’ school (Kyushu Jo Gakuin), with Mr. J. Mura- 
kami, a graduate of Roanoke College, Salem, Va., as 
the Japanese dean. 

Another institution located at Kumamoto is the Col- 
ony of Mercy. The idea of having a rescue home in 
the mission first was conceived by Mrs. J. P. Nielsen, 
while she served with her husband at Kurume. Every 
night until the small hours of the morning she was 
forced to listen to the dance music and babble of the 
geisha girls in adjoining houses, who were forfeiting 
their souls in indecent living for the amusement of 
men. She helped a number of these girls at Kurume, 
and after she moved to Kumamoto she secured the 
mission’s endorsement of a group of institutions of 
mercy, including a rescue home, an orphanage and an 
old people’s home. The Women’s Missionary Society 
of the United Lutheran Church has financed this en- 
terprise of merciful missionary service. The Kum- 
amoto colony of mercy is now in charge of Miss Maude 
Powlas. Her sister Annie has charge of kindergarten 


90 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


work in Saga and Ogi. Other women missionaries in 
Japan are Mary Lou Bowers, who was married in 
1922 to Rev. Louis G. Gray, a teacher in Kyushu 
Gakuin, who was succeeded by Rev. George Schillinger 


in 1926; Marion Potts, Reba Hendrickson, Helen 
Shirk, Amy Thoren and Faith Lippard, eldest 


daughter of Dr. and Mrs. C. K. Lippard. The women’s 
work, in addition to kindergarten instruction, is done 
in Sunday schools and women’s societies, and in relig- 
ious meetings for women and girls. Various methods 
are used in reaching them, such as classes in sewing, 
knitting, cooking, music and English. The training 
of Japanese Bible women for evangelistic work is in- 
cluded in the plans for the girls’ school at Kumamoto. 

The missionary longest in the service is Rev. C. K. 
Lippard, D.D., who, accompanied by his wife, went to 
Japan in 1900, and is now located as an evangelistic 
missionary at Kobe. Other cities occupied by mission- 
aries are Osaka, where Rev. and Mrs. C. W. Hepner 
are located; Shimonoseki, where Rev. and Mrs. D. G. 
M. Bach were at work until in 1926 they moved to 
Kumamoto; Nagoya, where Rev. and Mrs. A. C. 
Knudten labor; Moji, where Rev. and Mrs. J. Arthur 
Linn are at work; Fukuoka, one of the principal sta- 
tions, where Rev. and Mrs. C. E. Norman are work- 
ing; and Kurume where Rev. and Mrs. 8. O. Thorl- 
aksson are in charge. Mr. Thorlaksson is the repre- 
sentative of the Icelandic synod, supported in part by 
that synod. At Saga, Rev. and Mrs. F. W. Heins are 
located. Japanese pastors or evangelists are at work 
also in Kyoto, Toyohashi, Kurume, Omuta, Minamata, 
Hiida and a number of smaller towns. 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—JAPAN 91 


The year 1908 marks the entrance of the General 
Council into Japan. On the recommendation of the 
mission, Rev. and Mrs. F. D. Smith were located that 
year at Tokyo, where they remained until they re- 
signed in 1922. Others sent out by the General Coun- 
cil up to the time of the merger in 1918 are Rev. and 
Mrs. Edward T. Horn, Rev. and Mrs. M. M. Kipps 
(since resigned), and Rev. and Mrs. Clarence E. 
Norman. 

The organization of the United Lutheran Church 
in America, in 1918, automatically merged the mis- 
sions of the United Synod and General Council; and 
in 1919 that of the United Danish Church joined the 
others, so that there is now one single mission organ- 
ization in Japan. At the annual meeting the nenkwaa 
of Japanese workers meets separately in a Japanese 
chamber. Matters of common concern to both the mis- 
Sionaries and the Japanese workers are carried from 
one chamber to the other by a joint committee; and all 
matters of vital interest must have the approval of 
both chambers. There are organized congregations 
at a number of stations, but, as yet, none is completely 
self-supporting, though the day is not far distant when 
the Japan Evangelical Lutheran Church (Nihon 
Fukuin Ruteru Kyokwai) will be an influential reality 
in the islands of the empire of the rising sun. 

In the nineteen cities in which mission work is 
being done many who otherwise would never have an 
opportunity to hear the gospel are reached by the mis- 
sionaries, Japanese evangelists and pastors through 
meetings in rented street-side chapels, on street cor- 
ners or in mission tents placed in conspicuous loca- 
tions. Christian tracts always are distributed at such 


92 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


meetings. By the side of thirty-six missionaries, in- 
cluding wives, standing shoulder to shoulder with 
them in their efforts to spread the gospel, are sixteen 
ordained Japanese pastors, ten evangelists and eight- 
een Bible women. These serve congregations and 
groups of Christians numbering 1600. Both mis- 
sionaries and Japanese workers are zealous and untir- 
ing in their endeavor to help make Christianity tri- 
umphant in Japan. 

A unique feature of the mission work in Japan, 
which is acquiring increasing significance as the years 
pass, is that of newspaper evangelism, through which 
thousands are being interested in Christianity by 
reading articles concerning Christian truth and moral- 
ity, published in the newspapers. One of our mission- 
aries, Rev. C. E. Norman, is in charge of the Fukuoka 
office of the Newspaper Evangelism Movement, where 
there is a reception room, a lending library of Chris- 
tian books and pamphlets, and a staff of correspond- 
ents, who write to those who inquire concerning the 
newspaper articles they have read and get them in 
touch with their nearest Christian churches. Our mis- 
sion publishes a church paper called Ruteru, which 
means Lutheran, and has translated into Japanese 
Luther’s Small Catechism, the Common Service, the 
Lutheran Teachers’ Quarterly and other Lutheran lit- 
erature. It is said that the Japanese are especially 
attracted to Dr. Martin Luther as one whose rugged 
and compelling courage and fidelity to the truth ap- 
peals to their innate sense of loyalty and devotion. 

The earthquake on September 1, 1923, which de- 
stroyed Yokohama and a large part of Tokyo, and the 
devastating fire which followed in its wake, caused so 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—JAPAN 93 


much destruction of property and such an appalling 
loss of life, that the sympathy of people everywhere 
was aroused. Millions of dollars were raised at once 
in the United States and sent to Japan for earthquake 
sufferers, largely through the Red Cross Society. The 
United Lutheran Church in America provided its mis- 
sionaries with $35,000, which was used principally to 
establish two institutions of mercy: a home for desti- 
tute old people and one for homeless widows with chil- 
dren. These now have become permanent mission in- 
stitutions in Tokyo. Furthermore, since the earth- 
quake, the mission has erected, on a good site in a sub- 
urban section of the city, a parsonage for the 
Japanese pastor; and plans have been approved for a 
church building on the same site. Nearby a home for 
missionaries has been built. Work has been started 
also in one of the suburban sections of Tokyo. This de- 
velopment in the capital city, the third largest city in 
the world, has been under the direction of Rev. and 
Mrs. A. J. Stirewalt. 

Earthquakes of more or less intensity are frequent 
in Japan, which is volcanic in its origin. The area of 
Japan proper, consisting of four large and thousands 
of small islands, is less than that of the state of Cal- 
ifornia. Mountains and marshes, unfit for cultivation, 
constitute eighty-two per cent of these islands, and yet 
60,000,000 people inhabit them. Industrialism seems 
to be the only solution of Japan’s economic problem, 
and her recent industrial expansion has been mar- 
velous. At the same time she has increased her army 
and navy to such proportions and has made such pro- 
gress along all lines of modern development, that she 
is rated as one of the five great nations in the world. 


94 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Her hope, however, as her great statesmen fully 
realize, lies not in physical supremacy, but in spiritual 
and moral regeneration. The old faiths of Shintoism, 
her primitive religion of nature and ancestor worship, 
Confucianism, which was imported from China, and 
Buddhism, which came through China from India, 
have proven to be utterly inadequate. Christianity 
has made remarkable progress since it was allowed 
freedom for propagation in 1859, sixty-five years ago. 
While the number of baptized and confessing Chris- 
tians is comparatively small, amounting to about 250,- 
000, including Protestants, Roman Catholics and East- 
ern Orthodox Christians, it has been estimated that 
not less than a million of Japanese people are study- 
ing the Bible and to a greater or less extent are 
making its teachings the rule by which they live. 
Christian schools occupy a large place in the mis- 
sionary program in Japan. While only one-half of 
one per cent of the population is on the Church rolls, 
five in every hundred of all the young people who are 
getting an education beyond the primary grades are 
in schools under Christian auspices. Of the educated 
Japanese one in every hundred has accepted the Chris- 
tian faith, while the average for those who have not 
had the privilege of a higher education is only one in 
a thousand. The fact that Christianity thus has spread 
among those who think and lead in the empire, ex- 
plains its influence on social and national customs, 
standards and life. Mission schools in Japan, apart 
from Sunday schools and kindergartens, are practi- 
cally all of the higher grade, since primary education 
in public schools has been reserved by the state to 
itself. It is worthy of note, in this connection, to ob- 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—SOUTH AMERICA 95 


serve that today the literacy of the people of Japan 
is as high as that of any country on earth. 

Japan needs Christianity not only for her own sake 
but also for the sake of the whole Far East, where she 
is the recognized leader in modern advancement and 
political power. Americans now living are likely to 
see Japan become as potent in world affairs as Eng- 
land or the United States now is. Before that time 
comes the triumph of Christianity in Japan must be- 
come assured. Galena M. Fisher closes his book on 
“Creative Forces in Japan,” with the following sig- 
nificant paragraph: 

“In 1920 at the World’s Sunday School Convention 
in Tokyo occurred a scene full of symbolic meaning. 
It vividly represented the forces which are playing a 
leading part in re-creating Japan. A great chorus of 
young Japanese Christians, reinforced by a hundred 
missionaries, made the galleries of the Imperial the- 
atre resound to the thrilling harmonies of the ‘Halle- 
lujah Chorus.’ All distinctions of Orient and Occi- 
dent, of foreign and Japanese, were fused into one 
mighty ensemble. In the heart of the capital, within 
sight of the imperial palace, rang forth the prophetic 
words: ‘The kingdoms of this world are become the 
kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He shall 
reign forever and ever.’ ” 


SouTH AMERICA 


The United Lutheran Church has two mission fields 
in South America, one in Argentina, the other in Brit- 
ish Guiana. The headquarters for the Argentina mis- 
sion is the great city of Buenos Aires; that for the 
British Guiana mission is New Amsterdam. 


96 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


ARGENTINA 


The history of the Argentine mission may be divided 
into three periods. During the first period the work 
was under the direction of the Board of Home Mis- 
sions of the General Synod of the Evangelical Luth- 
eran Church in the United States, supported largely 
by its Women’s Missionary Society. Rev. 8. D. Daugh- 
erty, D.D., the first missionary, reached Buenos Aires 
in 1908, and labored there for three years, gathering a 
congregation of Swedish Lutherans, conducting an 
English-Spanish Sunday school in the city and an 
English preaching station with Sunday and day 
schools in Caseros, near Buenos Aires. Some work 
was done also in Santos Lugares and in Rosario. 


During the second period the mission work was in 
charge of the Pan-Lutheran Missionary Society for 
Latin America, an association of interested friends 
in various Lutheran synods in the United States. 
Its missionary was Rev. Efraim Ceder, who, in 1917 
and 1918, succeeded in organizing a Swedish Luth- 
eran congregation, which later connected with the 
mother Church in Sweden. 


The third period began in the fall of 1919, when 
the mission in Argentina was transferred to the Board 
of Foreign Missions of the United Lutheran Church 
in America. Dr. and Mrs. E. H. Mueller, formerly 
missionaries in India, were sent to Buenos Aires and 
reached that city in January, 1920. They developed 
an entirely new work in a suburban section of the 
city, Villa del Parque. There they organized a Spanish 
speaking congregation and started a number of 
schools. In April, 1923, the Colegio Nacional, with a 


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‘HOYNHD VNILNADUV ‘SAMIV SONANG “ANGUVd Tad VTTIA NI SONIGTIINEG NOISSIIN 





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“OBISUIST, “4FaSOA o91ey SSI, “dureyso, 
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“AjaI00G ~AIVUOISSIP, UlpjJeagG ey} Aq ‘GZET ‘TL AaBnueEP poeddojsuB.y, 


‘VNIHO “AONIAOYd ONOINVHS ‘SAIYVNOISSIN HOWNHD NVYAHINT GaLINaA 





UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—SOUTH AMERICA 97 


three years course and a two years commercial course, 
was started in rented buildings, and plans were 
adopted for the erection of adequate mission buildings. 
Early in 1922, Rev. Paul O. Machetzki joined the Muel- 
lers. When Dr. Mueller died on November 22, 1923, 
he had under construction the church building and the 
parsonage adjoining it. He was succeeded by Rev. 
Ralph J. White, who, in January, 1924, was trans- 
ferred from New Amsterdam, British Guiana, to 
Buenos Aires. In September, 1924, Rev. and Mrs. J. 
M. Armbruster reached the field. 


Congregations have been organized at Jose C. Paz 
and San Miguel, and a preaching place has been con- 
ducted at Caseros. In each of these places, as well as 
at Villa.del Parque, an elementary school is main- 
tained and Sunday schools are held. A service book 
for the Church in Spanish has been published, as well 
as a four-page weekly Sunday school paper and a 
sixteen-page monthly review for general use, both in 
the Spanish language. 

The year 1924 was marked by extensive building 
operations. The church in Villa del Parque was con- 
secrated in January. Three school rooms attached to 
this church building were finished in May. In June 
the parsonage next door was completed. A house 
nearby was purchased by Secretary Dr. Wolf during 
his first visit to the field in January, and thereafter 
it was used as a dormitory for the boarding pupils. 
The Mehring Memorial School building was finished 
in December. At the end of the year the mission’s 
investment in land, buildings and equipment amounted 
to about $100,000. 


98 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


After five years of work, the mission in Argentina, 
conducted by two missionary couples, one single 
male missionary and one single woman missionary, en- 
rolled nearly eight hundred pupils in the mission 
schools and over three hundred members in four con- 
gregations. 

BRITISH GUIANA 

The history of the Lutheran Church in the Guianas 
dates back to 1665, when Baron Justinianus von Weltz 
went to Surinam, where he died within a year after 
his arrival. The grave of this missionary hero 
of the Lutheran Church is not very far from the field 
of our American Lutheran mission in British Guiana. 
The head station is New Amsterdam, where Luth- 
erans from Holland established a congregation in 
1748. This congregation has survived to the present 
day. Rev. J. R. Mittelholzer, its pastor, sought and 
secured, in 1890, membership in the East Pennsyl- 
vania synod. After his death in 1915 the congrega- 
tion with its out-stations along the Berbice River was 
placed under the care and control of the Board of For- 
eign Missions of the General Synod, which sent Rev. 
and Mrs. Ralph J. White, in 1916, to be missionaries 
in charge. Some work has been done through the ser- 
vice of a catechist among the immigrated Hindi speak- 
ing East Indians in and around New Amsterdam. 

There are four river stations. The largest is St. 
Paul’s at Bien Content, with one hundred and twenty- 
five members. A smaller congregation is Mt. Hermon 
at St. Lust. At Ituni and Quamma there are small 
congregations of South American Indians, belonging 
to the Arawak tribe. In order to reach them the mis- 
slonary must travel down the river by steamer and 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—CHINA 99 


canoe for one hundred and twenty-five miles. A pri- 
mary school is conducted at each station. In New Am- 
sterdam Rev. Harlow Edgar Haas, who succeeded 
Rev. Mr. White in January, 1924, has established, with 
the efficient help of his wife, a flourishing industrial 
school. The mother congregation in New Amster- 
dam numbers one hundred and sixty members and 
conducts a Sunday school of over one hundred pupils. 


CHINA 


China contains one-fourth of the population of the 
globe and is one of the most strategic nations in the 
world from the foreign mission point of view. Chris- 
tian missions have made wonderful progress in this 
great far eastern country during the past fifty years. 
Another generation will see China literate, efficiently 
organized and one of the leading nations on earth. 

Soon after the German government occupied Kiao- 
chow harbor and the surrounding territory, with the 
intention of establishing a German colony in the Shan- 
tung peninsula, the Berlin Missionary Society, in 
1898, began a mission there. Its work grew to include 
three main stations, Tsingtao, Kiaochow and T'simo, 
and thirty outstations. 

During the World War, Japanese warships bom- 
barded Tsingtao and took the city after it had been 
heroically defended by the Germans. All former Ger- 
man possessions fell into the hands of the Japanese. 
The missionaries were allowed to remain, but were 
greatly restricted in their activity. Japan continued 
to hold possession of the Shantung peninsula after 
the war, until in 1922, as a result of the Washington 


100 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Disarmament Conference, it was transferred back to 
China. 

Because of financial embarrassment on account of 
the exigencies of the war and its aftermath, the Ber- 
lin Society was led most reluctantly to*hand over its 
mission to the United Lutheran Church in America, 
which took charge on January 1, 1925, after having 
agreed to purchase the mission property for $185,000 
United States gold, payable in ten annual installments 
and also to retain the service of the German mis- 
sionaries in the field. Among them are Rev. and Mrs. 
C. J. Voskamp, D.D., of Tsingtao. Dr. Voskamp is 
a Nestor among Protestant missionaries in China, an 
able executive and a recognized scholar in Chinese. 
The others are Rev. and Mrs. Theodore Scholz, of Kiao- 


chow; Miss Freda Strecker, of the same city; Rev. 
and Mrs. William Matzat, of Tsimo, and Miss Kate 


Voget, who is in charge of the mission school at Tsing- 
tao. In 1925 these were joined by eight American 
Lutheran missionaries, including Rev. Professor and 
Mrs. J. F. Krueger, Rev. and Mrs. P. P. Anspach, Dr. 
and Mrs. P. E. Laudenslager, Miss E. Moody and Miss 
K. M. Strunk. Dr. Kreuger was President of Mid- 
land College, Fremont, Neb., when he was called to go 
to China. Rev. Mr. Anspach was assistant campaign 
director for Wittenberg College, Springfield, Ohio. Dr. 
Loudenslager is a medical missionary. 

More than 1,000 Chinese Christians were trans- 
ferred with their missionaries, and thus the United 
Lutheran Church fell heir to mission work which in 
its evangelistic outreach already effectively influences 
multitudes of non-Christians. The Shantung province 
is the most densely populated province in China. It 


UNITED LUTERAN CHURCH—HOME BASE 101 


is more than three times as densely populated as the 
State of New York. Its area is about the same as that 
of Missouri. Other Protestants having missions in 
this province are the Northern Presbyterians of the 
United States, Swedish and American Southern Bap- 
tists and the Evangelischer Protestantischer Missions- 
verein of Germany. German Roman Catholic mission- 
aries also are at work in this province. The lan- 
guage of the province is Mandarin, the classical lan- 
guage of China. Within its bounds Confucius was 
born about six centuries before Christ, and his grave 
at Chufu is well preserved to this day. 

The statistics of the mission in 1925 were reported 
as follows: Foreign missionaries, five ordained mar- 
ried men, one married medical missionary and four 
single women missionaries; Chinese workers: preach- 
ers and evangelists, 29; Bible women, 8; Bible colpor- 
teurs, 3; teachers, 32; women teachers, 4; schools, 33; 
boys in school, 755; girls in school, 93. Eighty persons 
were baptized in 1924, and 177 were under instruc- 
tion in preparation for holy baptism. Of the 871 com- 
municants reported, 624 were men and 247 women. 

The United Lutheran Church in America rejoices 
that it now may join the other American Lutheran 
missions in China, whose work is described in this 
book, in the effort to win this great nation and people 
for Christ, the Redeemer of the world. 


HOME BASE 
The success of foreign missions as an enterprise of 
the Christian Church is determined more at the home 
base than in the foreign fields. The work abroad in- 
evitably will develop and grow only as rapidly as the 


102 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


home Church furnishes missionaries and money for 
the foreign mission task. 

The cultivation of the home base depends upon 
the missionary leadership of the pastors and the mis- 
sionary training of their congregations. In any his- 
tory of foreign missions, therefore, the home base de- 
velopments must be recorded with special reference 
to the organization of the home Church for foreign 
mission work and the cultivation of missionary inter- 
test and effort in its members. 

Before the merger in 1918 the constituent bodies 
which formed the United Lutheran Church in Amer- 
ica committed the missionary cultivation of the home 
Church and the home base administration of its for- 
eign missions first to missionary societies independ- 
ently organized,* then to standing committees of the 
respective church bodies, and finally to incorporated 
boards elected by these bodies. The Foreign Mission 
Boards of the General Synod and of the General Coun- 
cil were organized in 1869, that of the United Synod 
in the South in 1892. The General Synod’s Board 
first was incorporated in 1872 in the State of Pennsyl- 
vania and again in 1882 in the State of Maryland with 
headquarters in Baltimore; that of the General Coun- 
cil in 1910 in the State of Pennsylvania, with head- 
quarters in Philadelphia; that of the United Synod in 
the South in 1909, with headquarters at Columbia, 
5S. C. When these boards merged, Baltimore was 
chosen as the headquarters of the united board, the 
office now being located in the Lutheran Foreign Mis- 
sions House in that city at 18 East Mt. Vernon Place. 





f * See Chapter I for story of beginnings of Amierican Lutheran Foreign 
Missionary Societies. 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—HOME BASE _ 103 


For many years these boards carried on their cor- 
respondence with the missions and cultivated the home 
base through their elected officers, who served without 
remuneration and devoted their leisure moments to 
their executive duties. In 1886 the Board of Foreign 
Missions of the General Synod called and appointed 
Rev. George Scholl, D.D., to become its General Sec- 
retary, with the understanding that, as a salaried offi- 
cer, he should give his entire time to the duties of his 
office. He was succeeded in 1901 by Rev. Marion J. 
Kline, D.D. In 1908, Rev. Luther B. Wolf, D.D., be- 
came the General Secretary of this Board. The first 
general officer of the Board of Foreign Missions of 
the General Council was a field secretary, Rev. J. 
Teleen, D.D., who served from 1891 to 1901. In 1905 
the Board called and appointed Rev. George Drach, 
D.D., to serve as its General Secretary. The Foreign 
Mission Board of the United Synod in the South com- 
bined its offices of President and General Secretary in 
the person of Rev. Robert C. Holland, D.D., who served 
in this dual capacity from 1908 to the time of his 
death in 1915. The need of a full-time General Sec- 
retary led the Board in 1916 to call and appoint to 
this office one of its missionaries in Japan, Rev. 
Charles L. Brown, D.D., then on furlough in America. 
Drs. Brown, Drach and Wolf were retained by the 
united board as its General Secretaries. The executive 
work was reorganized and to each secretary specific 
duties were assigned. After Dr. Brown’s death in 
Liberia, Africa, in 1921, his departments were divided 
between the other two secretaries. Dr. Drach is Sec- 
retary for India, Japan, Literature, Publicity, Mission 
Study, Patrons and Proteges, Official Documents, is 


104 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


editor of The Foreign Missionary, and also Record- 
ing Secretary of the Board. Dr. Wolf is Treasurer of 
the Board and Secretary for Home Base, Candidates, 
Campaigns, Missionaries on Furlough, Transportation, 
Africa, South America and China. The other officers 
of the Board, since the merger in 1918, are: Presi- 
dent, Rev. Ezra K. Bell, D.D., of Baltimore, Md.; Vice- 
President, Rev. Professor C. Theodore Benze, D.D., 
of Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, Penna. Rev. J. Frank Heil- 
man, D.D., who served as Field Secretary from Sep- 
tember, 1924, to August, 1925, was succeeded by Rev. 
M. Edwin Thomas. 

Besides the pamphlets, leaflets, annual reports of 
the foreign missions, and occasional literature, the 
Board publishes two monthly magazines, one in Eng- 
lish, The Foreign Missionary, and the other in Ger- 
man, Der Missionsbote. Both had previously been 
published by the General Council Board. Der Mis- 
sionsbote, in its forty-eighth volume, was edited for 
twenty-five years by Rev. R. C. G. Bielinski, who was 
succeeded in 1925 by Rev. G. J. Hoeppner. The For- 
eign Missionary has been edited since 1908 by Rev. 
George Drach, D.D. It first was published in 1880 
under the editorship of Rev. Professor C. W. Schaef- 
fer, D.D. In the General Synod the Lutheran Mis- 
sionary Journal was published monthly as a joint 
Home Missionary, Foreign Missionary and Women’s 
Missionary Society magazine from 1880 until, in 1908, 
it was merged into Lutheran Church Work. At the 
same time the Women’s Missionary Society began to 
publish its own magazine, Lutheran Woman’s Work, 
with which was combined in 1919 the monthly mag- 
azine of the Women’s Missionary Society of the Gen- 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—HOME BASE _ 105 


eral Council, Lutheran Mission Worker. Lutheran 
Women’s Work has been edited by Mrs. Julius F. See- 
bach since 1914. 


WOMEN’S MISSIONARY SOCIETY 


The Women’s Missionary Society of the United 
Lutheran Church has become an influential and ef- 
fective organization in the Church. In addition to its 
support of the other causes, it has assumed full finan- 
cial responsibility for all women’s work in the foreign 
mission fields. It pays the salaries, allowances and 
traveling expenses of all women missionaries; it fur- 
nishes funds for their work and for all the buildings 
and equipment which their work requires; it also cul- 
tivates through conventions, correspondence and lit- 
erature the active co-operation of the women of the 
Church in the foreign mission enterprise. It func- 
tions through an incorporated executive board with 
an executive secretary and department secretaries and 
committees. Mrs. Helen C. Beegle, who succeeded 
Mrs. K. B. Schaffer in 1913, was the executive 
secretary from that time until her'death in 1924, when 
she was succeeded by Miss Amelia D. Kemp. The 
executive office is located in the Fulton Building, Pitts- 
burgh, Pa. All the contributions of the Women’s Mis- 
sionary Society are counted as specials apart from the 
apportionment. During the biennium ending July 3, 
1924, they amounted to $1,013,152, of which $413,376 
were expended for foreign missions. The gratifying 
amount of $210,000 was especially raised during this 
biennium for the proposed girls’ school in Japan. 

Other organizations of the Church, which to a 
greater or less degree assist in the work of foreign 


106 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


missions, are the Brotherhood, which in 1924 raised 
$3,500 for a dormitory at Kyushu Gakuin, Kumamoto, 
Japan, and now is helping to secure funds for Andhra 
Christian College in India; the Luther League, which 
in several of its state organizations has made sub- 
stantial contributions for various special objects, such 
as the professor’s house on the site of the Tokyo The- 
ological Seminary, for which the New York State 
League contributed $5,700; and the Laymen’s Move- 
ment for Stewardship, which grants financial assist- 
ance to a number of medical students who have the 
foreign field in view. 

Congregations, Luther Leagues, Sunday school 
classes and individuals support proteges in the for- 
eign fields, such as boys’ and girls’ scholarships, and 
native workers of all grades, by annual contributions 
ranging from $25 to $800. Foreign missionaries are 
assigned for support to congregations, societies and 
individuals, who contribute at least $1,000 a year for 
this purpose in excess of the apportionment. Many 
patrons undertake special personal work, such as the 
erection of mission buildings, the purchase of mission 
automobiles and other equipment for missionaries. 
The donation of annuity funds, on which interest is 
paid until at the death of the donor the principle be- 
comes the property of the Board, and the devise of 
money and property, stocks and bonds, as legacies, 
provides helpful financial assistance to the Board in 
its endeavor to meet the increasing demands of the 
rapidly expanding work abroad. 

How rapidly these demands have increased during 
the years since the merger may be noted from the 
fact that at that time the combined estimated budget 


UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH—HOME BASE _ = 107 


for the general work of the merging boards, not in- 
cluding women’s work, was $230,000, and for the year 
1925 it had increased to $623,500. The total income 
of the Board from all sources in 1924, including the 
contributions of the Women’s Missionary Society, was 
$886,395 and the total expenditure was $877,149. This 
clearly shows that the home Church has not kept pace 
with its growing work in the foreign mission fields 
and, as a result, the Board of Foreign Missions has 
been struggling with an indebtedness in its current 
account ever since the first biennium of the United 
Lutheran Church. The system of apportionment, 
adopted by the Church, is intended to provide all the 
income required for its current expense and, if there 
were an approximate 100 per cent payment on the ap- 
portionment, this objective would be reached; but, un- 
fortunately, the Church provides an average of less 
than 70 per cent of the apportionment. As a conse- 
quence the causes of the Church suffer in a propor- 
tionate degree for lack of funds. 

Nevertheless, it is gratifying to observe that 
throughout the Church there is widespread and grow- 
ing participation by gift and by prayer in its foreign 
mission enterprise. Since the merger two additional 
fields have been entered, one in Argentina, South 
America, the other in the Shantung province of China. 
The number of missionaries has increased to 175, in- 
cluding wives of missionaries. The Church is respond- 
ing to the special appeal for funds to establish the 
Andhra Christian College in India. The Girls’ School 
at Kumamoto, Japan, has been established. Property 
and building in Buenos Aires, valued at $100,000, have 
been provided. In every field splendid progress has 


108 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


been made. In addition to all this the United Luth- 
eran Church has preserved the Schleswig-Holstein 
mission in India at an annual expenditure of about 
$30,000, under the supervision of its missionaries, and 
has done its share through the National Lutheran 
Council for the preservation of other German and 
Finnish foreign missions since the war. 

The future is bright with hope for the greater and 
more effective foreign mission activity of the United 
Lutheran Church in America, because its members in 
all constituent synods are becoming more and more 
conscious of their foreign mission obligations and 
more and more eager to grasp their foreign mission 
opportunities in this wonderful age of world-wide con- 
tacts, in loving obedience to the great commission of 
Jesus Christ to make disciples of all nations. 


CHAPTER V. 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH OF | 
AMERICA 


J. R. BIRKELUND 


SOUTH AFRICA AND MADAGASCAR 


The official foreign mission effort of the Norwegian 
Lutheran Church of America began in 1917, when 
three Norwegian Lutheran Church bodies united and 
took over the foreign missions which previously “had 
been operated separately by the Hauge synod, the 
United Norwegian Church, and the Norwegian synod, 
in China, on the island of Madagascar, among Indian 
tribes of North America, and the Eskimos in Alaska.” 
At the same time it also assumed the support formerly 
given by the Norwegian synod to the Schreuder mis- 
sion in South Africa. 

The mission work among Indians in Wisconsin 
and among the Eskimos in northwestern Alaska, being 
within the borders of the United States, is not within 
the scope of this survey. The Schreuder mission in 
South Africa is conducted by a society in Norway; 
but it has been and still is, to a very large extent, sup- 
ported by the Norwegian Lutheran Church. While it 
cannot, strictly speaking, be called owr Church abroad, 
it has a large number of friends within our Church, 
who for nearly a generation have been working for 
this mission and in daily prayer have brought its 
needs before the throne of grace. A short survey of 
the Schreuder mission is, therefore, included. 

109 


110 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


SouTH AFRICA 


The first missionary to South Africa, sent out by 
the Norwegian Missionary Society in 1843, was Rev. 
H. P. §. Schreuder, who was born in 1817. Having 
received highest honors at the University of Kris- 
tiania (now Oslo), it was a surprise to many that a 
man of his ability, qualifications and academic stand- 
ing would forego a promising career in the homeland 
and spend his life among a degraded and barbarous 
people. 

It took eight years before Rev. Schreuder succeeded 
in getting a foothold in Zululand. Then through his 
medical skill he gained the confidence and gratitude 
of King Mpande. The king gave him some large tracts 
of land in recognition of the medical help received and 
also permission to establish mission stations. 


It was a hard field. Few missionaries have met 
more difficulties and hardships. It took fifteen long 
years before Rev. Schreuder saw any fruit of his un- 
tiring labor. The mission friends in the homeland 
were anxiously waiting for the message that someone 
had been brought from darkness to light, and many 
became discouraged. In 1858 the first convert was 
baptized. Today the missions begun by Schreuder 
count more than 20,000 Christians in Natal. He was 
also instrumental in starting the work in Madagascar. 


After twenty-two years on the field Schreuder re- 
turned to the homeland on his first furlough. He was 
then ordained bishop for “The Foreign Mission Field 
of the Norwegian Church.” This led to friction be- 
tween him and the missionary society and also to some 
extent with the missionaries on the field, and caused 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—AFRICA 111 


Bishop Schreuder to leave the society. A few friends 
in the homeland rallied to his support and a new so- 
ciety, “The Church of Norway Mission by Schreuder,”’ 
or as commonly called, “The Schreuder Mission,” was 
organized. He retained only one station and had 
started another when, broken down in health and as a 
result of an accident, he passed away in 1882. He was 
succeeded in his office and his work by the Rev. Nils 
Astrup, whose brother, Rev. Hans Astrup, soon joined 
him, both being university men from Norway. 

It is at this time that the Norwegian synod began 
its assistance. A son of Rev. N. Astrup and two other 
young men were sent to America and, after graduat- 
ing from Luther College, Decorah, Ia., and from the 
Theological Seminary, two of them, Johannes Astrup 
and H. Otte, were ordained and returned as mission- 
aries to the mission field, sent and supported by the 
Norwegian synod. From that time the Schreuder 
mission received substantial and regular aid from the 
synod. For several years more than half of the mis- 
sion support came from our congregations. 

It should be mentioned that the pioneer minister of 
our Church, Dr. Laur. Larsen, for forty-one years 
president of Luther College, Decorah, Ia., was related 
by marriage to the Astrup family. Two of his daugh- 
ters went to the mission field and one of them found 
an early grave in Zululand. The steadily increasing 
interest in foreign missions, which Dr. Larsen was 
enabled to instill into his students, undoubtedly re- 
ceived a strong impulse from the Schreuder mission, 
resulting later in the synod’s China mission, in which 
one of his sons, Rev. N. Astrup Larsen, became the 


112 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


first ordained missionary remaining in the service of 
our Church. 

Bishop Astrup died in 1919, having been on the mis- 
sion field for thirty-six years. His brother resigned 
in 1924, due to infirmities of old age, and returned to 
the homeland. At this writing he is, however, pre- 
paring to go out again and spend his last strength in 
bringing precious souls to the cross of Jesus Christ. 


Rev. Johannes Astrup, who is now superintendent 
on the field, spent twenty-three years there without 
a furlough. His visit in America in 1920-1921 created 
new and increasing interest in the mission. 


While the number of missionaries is small, the mis- 
sion has a staff of native pastors and other workers, 
who are earnestly and devotedly bringing the gospel 
to the many souls yet in darkness. 


A re-organization of the home committee in Nor- 
way, in 1921, will undoubtedly change the home con- 
nection of the mission. Negotiations are under way, 
but it is not possible yet to state anything definite. 
Many friends in America desire a closer connection 
between the Schreuder mission and our Church. It 
was “the first love” in the former Norwegian synod 
and proved to be a nucleus from which activities in 
other foreign fields started and grew. 


MADAGASCAR 
M. J. STOLEE 


Our school geographies tell us that Madagascar is 
an island in the Indian Ocean, about 250 miles from 
the continent of Africa, situated in the torrid zone, 
and that it has a population of three and a half mil- 


( 





CHURCH AND MISSION STATION, MANANTENI 





A, MADAGASCAR. 


“AUVOSVOVOVIN NI WOIAWES AVONOS V WaLIV 





NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—MADAGASCAR 113 


lions. It may be of interest to add that it is the third 
largest island in the world, having an area equal to 
that of Texas, or of about four of our larger central 
states. Politically it has been a French colony since 
1896. 

The Field.—The field which the Lord has given the 
Norwegian Lutheran Church of America in this island 
is confined to one province in the south. It is called 
the province of Fort Dauphin. A line drawn from the 
east coast along the 23 degree latitude, about two- 
thirds of the distance across the country, and then 
running due south to the sea, would form a sector, the 
area of which is somewhat larger than two states the 
size of Massachusetts. This is our field. 

The eastern part of this region is mountainous, 
broken by deep valleys and numerous streams. This 
is the home of the jungle forests, which present a most 
luxurious vegetation. The rainfall is very copious, 
furnishing ample moisture for the countless rice fields 
of the lowlands. 

Toward the west the country is generally level. 
Here the rainfall is scant; the forests are few and far 
between. But immense grassy plains extend in all 
directions, dotted here and there with groves of giant 
cactus and great herds of cattle. 

The Climate.—The climate is an important factor 
in the missionary enterprise. Madagascar has a hot 
climate, which is not at all favorable to the white man. 
Malaria is prevalent, especially in the east, where mos- 
quito-breeding swamps are common. Our sector is 
not in the path of the destructive tornadoes of the 
Indian Ocean; only a few really serious storms of this 
kind have struck our field in the last thirty years. 


114 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


The Natives.—The natives are called Malagasy (in 
French, malgache). Racially they are of the brown 
Malay type, having language, traditions and customs 
in common with the peoples of the Indian archipelago. 
There are two tribes with which we are concerned. 
They are the Tandroy and the Tanosy. Together they 
are about 300,000 strong. They have no cities of any 
size. They do, however, settle in villages, each hav- 
ing its chief. Tribal feuds and slave or cattle-raiding 
expeditions were the order of the day before the 
French occupation of the island. Now they have been 
effectually stopped. 

Nature has been lavish in her gifts to these natives. 
Fields and forests and herds most generously supply 
their needs. They do not have to work hard; conse- 
quently they are an indolent people. Their houses are 
small and primitive, being constructed of reeds, palm 
leaves and a few poles. The interior contains a crude 
fireplace, a couple of kettles, a basket or two, a mat to 
spread on the ground, and the family fetich or charm. 
No beds, chairs nor tables are found. 

Religion.—The everyday life of the Malagasy is in- 
timately bound up with his religion. Briefly stated, 
his religion is animistic with a maze of traditions, 
taboos and disgusting practices. The forests, caves 
and the very air are said to be inhabited by spirits 
which may be benevolent or malevolent according 
to their whims or the value of the sacrifice offered 
to them. Chief among all the spirits and most to be 
worshiped are the departed souls of ancestors. 
These are consulted on all important occasions 
in life. And the customs handed down to pos- 
terity by them constitute the supreme law of religion 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—MADAGASCAR 115 


and conduct. Child-marriage with all its attendant 
misery, polygamy with all its untold infamy, infanti- 
cide by burying alive the children born on unlucky 
days, ordeals by poison or fire—-these and many other 
equally revolting practices are justified by the ances- 
tral traditions; hence they assume the importance of 
religious commandments. It is the business of the 
witch-doctors to interpret these traditions and to pre- 
scribe the required sacrifices. But their most lucrative 
trade consists in making fetiches supposed to possess 
amazing powers to ward off disasters and to procure 
favors. Every native has one or more of such power- 
ful fetiches in his possession. 

The first chapter of European intercourse with the 
native Malagasy is a sordid tale. Portuguese adven- 
turers visited the island in the fifteenth century. The 
slave trader and the rum dealer came in their wake. 
The inhuman treatment accorded the poor savages 
aroused such hatred and distrust toward all whites, 
that it constitutes, to this day, the chief hindrance to 
missionary success. 

Missionary Attempts.—The first attempts at win- 
ning the Tanosy for Christ were made by Roman Cath- 
olics at Fort Dauphin, in the middle of the seventeenth 
century. They proved to be a complete failure. Due 
to the methods of Father Stephen, the natives rose in 
rebellion against him and his French companions and 
annihilated the entire settlement. The next attempt 
was made by the native officers of Ranavalona II, the 
first Christian queen of Madagascar. Her predeces- 
sors had obtained a foothold on the south coast, main- 
taining a military post at Fort Dauphin. When the 
queen embraced Christianity it became incumbent 


116 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


upon the soldiers to organize a church. It is evident 
that there was but little Christianity connected with 
it; and still less was done to gain the adjoining tribes 
for the new religion. 

The Lutheran Mission.—What induced the Luth- 
erans to occupy this far-away field? We will men- 
tion briefly the events leading up to its occupation. 
The London Missionary Society sent messengers of the 
gospel to the capital of Madagascar as early as 1820. 
The story of their initial success, the ensuing persecu- 
tions by the cruel Ranavalona I, lasting thirty fearful 
years, the heroic martyrdom of nearly 200 converts, 
turned the attention of Church people everywhere to 
Madagascar. Later rulers adopted a liberal attitude 
toward the Christian faith, reaching its climax when 
Ranavalona II formally accepted the Protestant re- 
ligion. 

The home Churches saw in all these events the call 
of the Lord to enter and possess this island for Christ. 
It is not within the scope of this chapter to tell the 
story of that period. Suffice it to say that the Nor- 
wegian Missionary Society decided to enter the new 
field. Bishop Schreuder, at that time stationed in 
South Africa, was ordered to go to Madagascar to 
make a preliminary survey with a view to establish- 
ing a Lutheran mission on the island. This was done 
in 1865. The work of this society has been blessed to 
a degree almost without a parallel in the annals of 
modern missions. There is today in the interior of 
the country a native Lutheran Church, firmly 
grounded in the faith and confession of our Church, 
a Church of more than 100,000 members. 

How American Lutherans Became Interested in 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—MADAGASCAR 117 


Madagascar.—The Norwegian immigrant brought 
with him to his new home in the West a fervent love 
for his Church and all its activities. Especially was 
this the case in regards to the salvation of the heathen. 
Church papers and missionary periodicals from the 
old home became potent factors in keeping the inter- 
est alive. Missionaries home on furlough made occa- 
sional visits to the Norse settlements of the North- 
west, in this way advancing the good cause. There 
were, among the early Church pioneers, a number of 
good men and true, who were ever active in behalf 
of foreign missions. Permit us to mention two: The 
Rev. P. A. Rasmussen, of Lisbon, IIl., and Professor 
George Sverdrup, president of Augsburg Seminary, 
Minneapolis, Minn. By their appeals through the 
press, by lectures and sermons, they succeeded in crys- 
talizing missionary sentiment into action. Conven- 
tions were called and plans were rapidly going for- 
ward for a more direct participation in the work. The 
Norwegian Missionary Society, to whose treasury most 
of the offerings for missions had been sent, agreed to 
call and send to their field such young men as the 
Church in America might find properly qualified for 
the service. 

The year 1887 is a red letter date in our mission 
history. A young theological candidate at Augsburg 
Seminary, J. P. Hogstad, declared himself willing to 
go to Madagascar, if the Lord would have him. The 
Norwegian Missionary Society sent him a call, and the 
Norwegian Lutherans of America had in him their 
first representative in the mission field. After a con- 
ference with the missionaries in the interior, it was 
decided that the Rev. Hogstad should go to the land of 


118 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


the Tanosy. In 1888, Hogstad went to Fort Dauphin 
as the first Lutheran missionary in the vast regions of 
South Madagascar. 

The native Church, organized by the queen’s sol- 
diers, welcomed the new missionary; but he soon made 
the discovery that its membership and practice were 
such that he could not co-operate with it. He felt that 
the savage and hitherto unreached Tanosy had the 
first claim to his service. Several powerful chiefs, 
more or less independent of the queen’s government, 
had divided the tribe among themselves, and were ex- 
tremely jealous of their prestige. To these men Hog- 
stad came and made friends with them. He seemed 
to have a wonderful influence over them, though the 
caprices and unreasonable demands of those tyrants 
were almost beyond human endurance. Having gained 
the confidence of the natives, he established schools in 
the more important villages of the neighborhood, the 
Norwegian Missionary Society supplying him with the 
necessary teachers from the inland. It was a hard 
field, but the Christian teaching and preaching bore 
fruit at last. The Tanosy began to enter into the king- 
dom of God. 

The year 1892 marks an important event in the Mad- 
agascar mission. The conviction had been growing 
in the United Norwegian Lutheran Church that it 
ought to have a field of its own in Madagascar. Ac- 
cordingly a delegation was sent to the Norwegian Mis- 
sionary Society, urging the transfer of a portion of 
South Madagascar to the Church in America. This 
was readily agreed to. The tribes living south of the 
23rd degree latitude became the wards of our Church. 
Due to an unfortunate division in the home Church, 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—MADAGASCAR 119 


this field was partitioned between the two factions, 
the United Church retaining about two-thirds of the 
original territory. 

The spirit of missions was not permitted to suffer 
any setback on account of dissentions at home. The 
churches gave liberally of their means, enabling the 
Board to send a considerable force of men and women 
to the field. The records contain the names of thirty 
men and twenty-five single women, who were sent out 
by our Church to Madagascar. Some of them were 
granted a long day in the Lord’s harvest. In 1911 
the Rev. Hogstad passed to his reward, having given 
all the love and all the energy of twenty-three years of 
service to the south coast people. The careers of others 
were cut short by the unfavorable climate or other 
causes. At present the staff of whites comprises 
nineteen men and fourteen single women missionaries. 

The mission work quite naturally has resolved itself 
into two main activities, the evangelistic and the edu- 
cational. 

The Evangelistic Work.—All our missionaries are 
messengers of the crucified and risen Jesus. Experi- 
ence has shown that the story of the Cross is a power 
of God unto salvation for all, even for the most de- 
graded Malagasy. A great deal of the missionary’s 
time is spent in personal work, explaining the way of 
salvation, and pleading with individuals to be recon- 
ciled to God. The important centers of the Tanosy 
tribe have been occupied and, though the task is still 
in its pioneer stage, a fair ingathering has already 
taken place at all the stations. Having won the natives 
for Christ, the missionary must watch over them, train 
them for active membership in a Christian congrega- 


120 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


tion, and develop leaders, so that in time, not too dis- 
tant, the Church may attain to the full stature of the 
body of Christ. 

The Tandroy, most savage of all Malagasy savages, 
having’ come into contact with the gospel, seem sur- 
prisingly receptive. The Rev. G. Torvik, the oldest 
and one of the ablest men on the field, together with 
the Rev. A. Picard, our French Lutheran pastor, were 
chosen for the difficult task of blazing the trail into 
their dark land. Others have gone to their assistance, 
so that, at present, all but two of the large centers are 
occupied. The work of evangelizing the Malagasy is 
being carried on at ten main stations. The mission- 
aries are ably assisted by twelve ordained natives. In 
addition to these 192 evangelists and Bible women at 
104 outstations are faithfully endeavoring to win their 
countrymen for the Savior. Since the opening of the 
mission in 1888, 6,234 persons have been baptized. 

The Educational Phase of the Work.—The educa- 
tion of the native has been on the missionary program 
since the very beginning. Hogstad had considerable 
success in starting village schools, conducted by people 
of the Betsileo tribe. It was soon realized, however, 
that these schools would render but little service, 
unless manned by teachers of local origin. The mis- 
sionaries met the emergency by opening training in- 
stitutes. By combining both normal and evangelistic 
features, these schools have produced good results. 
But the morals of the Malagasy home are so unutter- 
ably filthy that the schools, even the best of them, 
could hardly hope to overcome the evil precepts in- 
stilled into the child from earliest infancy. The only 
way in which real Christian character could be formed 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—MADAGASCAR 121 


would be to take some of the children out of their 
heathen environment and give them an efficient train- 
ing under vastly different circumstances. <A _ school 
for native girls was started in a small way by Miss 
Nilsen at Fort Dauphin in 1896. It might properly 
be called a Rescue Home, as it was intended to rescue 
the little girls from their own depraved homes. The 
Home soon grew to considerable proportions. But 
the proximity of the military barracks and un- 
desirable neighbors made it advisable to move the in- 
stitution to Sainte Luce, twenty-five miles north of 
Fort Dauphin. This home for girls has been one of 
the chief assets of the mission. The girls are given 
all the advantages of a Christian home, combined with 
a modern public school. The course of instruction is 
recognized by the French authorities, inasmuch as sat- 
isfactory attention is given both to the French lan- 
guage and to such domestic science as is suited to 
Malagasy conditions. The mission has been exception- 
ally fortunate in its staff of workers in this school, 
some of the best women in our Church having volun- 
teered for the service. Most of our young Christian 
workers get their wives from the Sainte Luce school; 
and it must appear self-evident that this arrangement 
makes for truly Christian homes, and that these in 
their turn become the foundation of a virile native 
Church. Three other similar schools for girls have 
been founded at various places in the field. The total 
attendance at present aggregates 200. 

The School for Boys.—A training school for boys 
was started in 1897 in the home of the Rev. P. C. Hal- 
vorson, at Fort Dauphin. In spite of the close quar- 
ters, Catholic intrigues, parental interference and the 


122 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


savage character of the little fellows themselves, the 
Home grew and prospered mightily, having at times 
more than 200 boys in attendance. It has been no 
small item for the mission to feed and clothe all these 
boys, but it is, beyond a doubt, its very best invest- 
ment. The institution lately has been transferred to 
a large and convenient property at Manantantely, a 
short distance from Fort Dauphin. It is one of the 
best equipped educational establishments in the island, 
both as regards teachers and buildings. A thorough 
instruction in the Christian religion is, of course, 
given first place. A recognized French teacher is at 
the head of his department, and all the boys are made 
to pass rigid examinations in the branches prescribed 
by the colonial government. It may be noted that 
much attention is paid to manual training. Normal 
school classes have been added to the other courses at 
Manantantely. The most promising boys are trained 
for the teaching profession, through which they are 
to practice the art of winning souls for Christ. 

A school for evangelists and their wives has been 
conducted at Fort Dauphin for some years. The young 
men who prove their mettle as “fishers of men” are 
sent to the theological seminary at Fianarantsoa, in 
the interior. This is a union Lutheran seminary con- 
ducted jointly by the Norwegian Missionary Society, 
the Lutheran Free Church, and the Norwegian Luth- 
eran Church of America. The regular three-years’ 
course is offered, thus securing for the Lutheran 
Church of Madagascar a well qualified native clergy. 

Besides the above-mentioned schools, there are seven 
elementary schools and eight preparatory schools, 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—MADAGASCAR 123 


having an attendance of 250 and 200 respectively. One 
hundred and three Sunday schools have an enrollment 
of 3,747. 

The Native Church.—Western Christianity with its 
thousand years of spiritual experience is apt to expect 
too much from the Malagasy Church; and when ex- 
pectations fail, judgment is apt to be both hasty and 
unkind. Malagasy Christians of the first and second 
generations are immature. They are weak and prone 
to stumble. All their antecedents, all their traditions 
are steeped in unspeakable vices. Hence we are grieved 
but not surprised when their old habits occasionally 
assert themselves in glaring sins. Nevertheless, the 
Spirit of God is slowly, but surely, building the true 
Temple of the Lord among them. There is an appre- 
ciation of the Means of Grace, fully up to the standard 
set by the home churches. Family devotion is very 
generally observed; all the Christians of the village 
usually come together for evening prayers. 

Church discipline is an essential feature in the life 
of the congregation. Moral delinquencies are kindly 
but firmly dealt with. It is encouraging to note that 
the natives themselves see the urgent necessity of a 
strict attitude toward the offender, and that they are 
led to take the necessary steps according to the scrip- 
tural injunction. 

The question of self-support has come to the fore. 
Offerings have become general in all the churches. 
Last year the native contributions totaled 29,402 
francs, which at a normal rate of exchange would 
amount to nearly $6000. Some of the congregations 
have assumed the care of old and neglected persons 


124 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


in their neighborhood. Other churches are sending 
out and supporting native missionaries. Aid societies 
have been organized by the Christian women; and 
Young People’s Luther Leagues are supported with a 
great deal of enthusiasm. The latest development in 
the native Church is the organizing of all the Luth- 
erans of Madagascar into one national body. This is 
as it should be. The day is not far distant when there 
will be a self-supporting, self-governing and self- 
propagating Lutheran Church in Madagascar. 

The French Occupation.—The French occupation of 
the island and the subsequent varying moods of the 
colonial policy toward our mission have had such far- 
reaching effect on the work that a few explanatory 
remarks will not be amiss. There can be no ques- 
tion but that the coming of the French had some 
positively beneficial effects on the natives. The ad- 
ministration of the defunct Hova government was no- 
toriously corrupt. Of public safety there was none. 
Slave raids and robbery went on unchecked. Instead 
of native graft, capable and just courts have been set 
up throughout the whole country; an efficient police 
force is maintaining law and order; many good roads 
have been built; travel and commerce have become 
safe and profitable. 

All this eventually reacted favorably on the mis- 
sion work; but the immediate effect of the French oc- 
cupation was unfavorable. Our schools suffered a 
veritable disaster. The new regime had no interest 
in the education offered by the schools of the missions. 
The heathen were not slow in noting this attitude of 
the government, with the result that very few could 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—MADAGASCAR 125 


be induced to go to school. When, in the course of 
time, the administration became frankly hostile to the 
missions, closing most of the churches as well as the 
schools except such as could secure French teachers, 
then the day of our educational activity seemed for- 
ever past. Thanks to the United States consul in 
Madagascar, and the timely help of the French Luth- 
eran Church, our schools were able to weather the 
storm, until a more liberal policy was inaugurated. 
This has become increasingly evident since the World 
War. 

The military occupation of non-civilized lands has 
never failed to exert a demoralizing influence on the 
conqueror and on the conquered. Madagascar was no 
exception. The heathen very naturally concluded that 
the morals of the whites were no better than his own. 
Why, then, should their religion be preferred to that 
of his ancestors? When the Governor-General re- 
fused the oft-repeated petitions of our missionaries 
for permission to go into the Tandroy country, he 
made it sufficiently plain that he considered the sav- 
ages better off without the Christian religion. And 
he took pains to let the natives know his attitude. 
When our churches were closed, when our people were 
threatened with arrest for letting their neighbors be 
present during family devotion, while the heathen by 
the thousands were absolutely free to indulge in their 
wild dances, carousals and unspeakable excesses, for 
days and nights at a time—is it any wonder that the 
evangelistic work suffered seriously? 

But the Lord of the harvest did not permit hostile 
forces to triumph. A reaction in favor of fair play, 


126 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


official non-interference in religious matters, and a 
friendly intercourse with the missionaries on the part 
of local administrators, give us reason to hope that the 
day of religious intolerance is past. 


CHAPTER VI. 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH OF 
AMERICA 


M. SATERLIE 


CHINA 


The Norwegian Lutherans who came to this country 
were, in the beginning, as far as Church work is con- 
cerned, principally engaged in organizing congrega- 
tions, building churches and schools and gathering 
into the fold of the Church the thousands of immi- 
grants who were scattered throughout the states and 
territories of the United States of America. But the 
Norwegian Lutheran immigrants were not satisfied 
with doing Church work only in the homeland. To 
spread the kingdom of Heaven to all non-Christian 
people was no less important to many of our fore- 
fathers than the other activities of the Church; and 
their interest in foreign missions was promoted and 
strengthened by visits of missionaries from their 
native land. During this period of Norwegian Amer- 
ican Lutheran Church history no synod carried on any 
independent work in heathen lands, but financial sup- 
port was given to the Norwegian Missionary Society 
for its work in Madagascar and South Africa. 

A letter from China written by a missionary from 
Norway, O. S. Nestegaard, was published in America 
in 1889; and this letter was the first call to our Church 
people to engage in missionary work in China. After 

127 


128 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


a short stay in China, Mr. Nestegaard, returning to 
Norway by way of the United States, aroused a deep 
interest in China through his lectures and sermons, 
especially in congregations of the Hauge synod; and 
as a result it quite naturally followed that a society 
was organized to begin independent work in China. 


THE CHINA MISSION SOCIETY 


In 1890 at the annual meeting of the Hauge synod 
the question of starting missionary work in China 
was considered. The synod at that time was not 
ready to begin the proposed work; but a number of 
those interested in an immediate organization pre- 
pared a plan for a missionary society among Norwe- 
gian Lutherans in this country similar to the Norwe- 
gian Missionary Society in Norway. Thus it hap- 
pened that twenty-five pastors and laymen, who had 
attended the convention, organized a society known as 
the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran China Mission 
Society. 

The China Mission Society tried, as far as possible, 
to make the organization of the Norwegian Missionary 
Society its pattern; and the founders endeavored in 
every way to create an organization able to do effec- 
tive work. It was to consist of local missionary so- 
cieties, and the work was to be managed by a mission 
board. At the annual conventions of the society the 
officials of the board were to make their reports and all 
decisions regarding the work were to be made. Field 
workers were engaged to conduct a campaign of for- 
eign missionary education by arranging meetings in 
the congregations of the various synods. Such meet- 





RCH IN CHINA. 


N CHU 


A 


UTHER 


ORGANIZATION MEETING OF THE L 








AN OUT=SDRATION 





LENA DAHL MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, SINGYANG, 
HONAN, CHINA 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—CHINA 129 


ings were held in congregations belonging to the 
Hauge synod and to the United Norwegian Church, 
and they aroused deep interest in China mission 
work. 

When the Hauge synod in 1891 decided to begin 
missionary work of its own in China, it was but nat- 
ural that its pastors and congregations should give 
their support to the foreign mission work of their 
synod rather than to an independent society. Conse- 
quently the society lost many of its members and much 
of its support; but the membership from other synods 
increased and the work was continued. The society 
had won multitudes of friends in the United Norwe- 
gian Lutheran Church, and its affairs were managed 
by members of that Church, until in 1904 the United 
Norwegian Church officially assumed charge of the 
mission. 

By the time the United Norwegian Church assumed 
the work, twenty-two missionaries, including wives, 
had been sent to China. The pioneer among the Nor- 
wegian Lutheran missionaries is Rev. Daniel Nelson, 
who went to China in 1890. The society selected Han- 
kow, the Chicago of China, as its starting point. Han- 
kow lies six hundred miles west of Shanghai, one of 
China’s largest seaports. The society finally selected 
as its field a part of the southeastern portion of the 
province of Honan. Before this field was selected, 
promising work had been carried on in Hankow and 
a nearby place; but the chief function of the society 
was to create interest in foreign missions among 
Lutheran Church people in the homeland. In the for- 
eign field it did much preparatory work of great value 
to the China mission of the United Norwegian Church. 


130 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


THE CHINA MISSION OF THE HAUGE SYNOD 


Of all the Norwegian Lutheran Church bodies in 
America the Hauge synod was the first to start for- 
eign missionary work of its own. At its annual meet- 
ing in 1891, the members of the convention, conscious 
of their duty to do more for the salvation of the non- 
Christian world, adopted a resolution to begin sep- 
arate work in China. The synod immediately took 
steps to prosecute the work energetically. A Board of 
China Missions was appointed and rules for foreign 
missions were adopted. The convention, aware 
that such an undertaking in a far-away, foreign coun- 
try would gradually become a heavy drain on its treas- 
ury, planned to get every member of the synod inter- 
ested in its China mission. A traveling field secretary 
was appointed. Missionaries, pastors and laymen were 
drafted into this campaign and it was made a rule, as 
far as possible, to hold a foreign mission meeting once 
a year in every circuit of the synod. 


As far as missionaries were concerned, the synod 
was fortunate, because volunteers immediately pre- 
sented themselves. It was literally true that “before 
they called, the Lord answered.” In 1890 three vol- 
unteers offered to go to China, and they were sent to 
the foreign field in 1892. One of these was Rev. H. N. 
Ronning, the first pastor in the Hauge synod to go to 
China. From that time to 1917, thirty missionaries 
were sent to the foreign field. 


This success was partly the result of the interest in 
foreign missions prevailing among students at the 
schools of the synod. Missionaries from different 
countries visited these schools, missionary societies 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—CHINA § 181 


were organized, and instruction in foreign missions 
was given. Later these societies joined the Luther 
League of the synod and the interest of the students in 
foreign missions was in this way spread among the 
young people. 

The ladies’ aid societies, as well as other mission- 
ary societies, helped the China mission of the synod; 
but the leaders were conscious of the need of a better 
organization of women in order that the work could 
be done more efficiently ; and in 1901 the first Women’s 
Missionary Federation of Norwegian Lutherans in this 
country was organized. This federation established 
a Bible school for women in China, built a home in St. 
Paul for missionaries on furlough, and in 1916 sent a 
representative to China to celebrate the twenty-fifth 
anniversary. In addition to these activities the fed- 
eration gave support to various branches of Church 
work at home. 

It so, happened that missionaries from different 
Lutheran synods and societies came to Hankow about 
the same time, all eagerly looking for a place to start 
their missions. On the advice of other missionaries, 
this small band of newcomers planned to begin work 
somewhere in the northwestern part of the province 
of Hupeh and in the adjoining part of Honan province. 
The first missionaries of the Hauge synod first went 
to Fancheng, a large commercial city, and decided that 
it should be the starting point and center of their 
work. In 1893 property was bought and building oper- 
atiéns commenced; but unexpectedly they were 
stopped. The Chinese middleman, who had given as- 
sistance in securing the property, was imprisoned and 
beaten and the missionaries were forced to leave. The 


132 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


government officials and the populace were hostile. 
The missionaries were greeted with abusive language, 
cobblestones and other missiles. Time and again the 
missionaries tried to resume work, and after two years 
they finally succeeded. 

At Fancheng much of the mission work of the synod 
was concentrated and, consequently, a number of 
buildings had to be erected there, such as missionaries’ 
residences, a church, chapels, a hospital, classrooms 
and dormitories for two high schools, and other build- 
ings. Four other main stations were opened and at 
these places considerable building was done. 

The Hauge synod sent comparatively many mission- 
aries to China, who, facing the task of evangelizing 
two million Chinese, were soon aware of the need of 
Chinese Christian helpers. They opened training 
schools, private classes, Bible institutes and high 
schools. A high school for boys and another for girls 
were established. The high school for boys included 
a preparatory school and a theological seminary. Theo- 
logical instruction was begun, but discontinued after 
the establishment of the joint Lutheran theological 
seminary. The high schools did good work in training 
native workers and a great and prosperous evangelistic 
work was developed in the different districts. 

Dispensary and hospital work was started at an 
early date and was of great assistance in removing 
prejudice and ill-will against foreigners. Meanwhile 
thousands of sick and suffering people were relieved. 
Later the synod joined a neighboring mission in main- 
taining a hospital and a high school for girls. 

The synod co-operated with other Lutheran mis- 
sions in establishing a Lutheran theological seminary 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—CHINA = 133 


and a school for missionaries’ children, and took its 
pro rata share in erecting the buildings that were 
needed for these union enterprises. 

The foreign missionary work of the Hauge synod 
gradually expanded both in the foreign field and at the 
home base for a period of twenty-five years. During 
its annual meeting in 1916, a day was set aside for 
the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of its 
China mission, and a jubilee celebration was held on 
the field in the fall of the same year. Rev. C. J. East- 
vold and Mrs. Eastvold were sent as the synod’s repre- 
sentatives to the celebration in China. This visit to 
the field was greatly appreciated by the missionaries 
and Chinese Christians. 


THE CHINA MISSION OF THE UNITED NORWEGIAN 
CHURCH 


When the United Norwegian Lutheran Church of 
America, in 1903, decided to assume charge of the 
mission work in China that had been carried on by the 
China Mission Society, it faced a double difficulty: 
scarcity of missionaries and lack of money. At the 
annual convention in 1903 the discouraging informa- 
tion was given by the Board of Missions that the 
United Norwegian Church had left only five of the 
twelve missionaries who had been sent to Mad- 
agascar, and only thirteen in the field in China, 
which it had been decided to add to the foreign mis- 
Sion work of the Church. The new foreign mission 
of the Church, as well as the Madagascar mission, 
would need more missionaries. The Board, further- 
more, reported a large deficit and that the China mis- 
Sion would increase the budget to twice its former 


134 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


amount. This information was a revelation to the pas- 
tors and delegates attending the convention, and it 
was carried to the congregations of the Church, which 
were urged to plead with the Lord of the harvest to 
provide more laborers and money. 

The United Norwegian Church gradually took steps 
to organize the work in America so that it might pros- 
per and expand both at home and abroad. A separate 
board was appointed to have charge of foreign mis- 
sions only, and a secretary was elected to devote him- 
self exclusively to this work. Field workers were em- 
ployed who, assisted by the secretary, board members 
and missionaries home on furlough, pleaded the cause 
before the people of the Church. Numerous meetings 
were held throughout the Church to arouse interest in 
foreign missions. The annual conventions urged all 
pastors to assist in collecting the budget for foreign 
missions and recommended that one of the annual 
meetings in the various circuits of the Church should 
be devoted to missions only, and that congregations 
able to do so should support assigned foreign mis- 
sionaries. This agitation had a wonderful effect. An 
ever-increasing number of congregations annually 
gave large offerings to foreign missions. Some made 
themselves responsible for the support of mission- 
aries, the students in the schools of the Church did 
the same, one member of the Church alone paid the 
salary of a substitute on the field. Many ladies’ aid 
societies, missionary societies and individual members 
of congregations supported native workers. Dona- 
tions to foreign missions in thirteen years increased 
from $18,000 to $153,000. Volunteers applied for ser- 
vice abroad. Asa result of addresses on foreign mis- 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—CHINA 185 


sions at the schools of the Church, the interest of the 
students in the work in foreign lands increased. In 
1911 the United Norwegian Church added foreign mis- 
sions to the curriculum of its theological seminary and 
appointed a professor to give lectures on this subject. 
As far as we know, the United Norwegian Church was 
the first Lutheran synod to do this. Rev. M. J. Stolee, 
a foreign missionary of the Church, was chosen. The 
result of this effort in the Church schools was that in 
ten years fifty young men and women volunteered to 
go to the foreign fields, of whom thirty-four were sent 
to China. 

The Women’s Missionary Federation of the Church, 
in many ways, gave the foreign mission work of the 
Church enthusiastic and active support. Its outstand- 
ing achievement was the provision of four rest cot- 
tages built for missionaries at home on furlough. The 
federation published and distributed books and pamph- 
lets on the missions of the Church, arranged meetings 
for missionary societies in many parishes to cultivate 
the cause of missions and to secure members. Dur- 
ing the six years of its existence the Women’s Mis- 
sionary Federation accomplished splendid results. 

The United Norwegian Church, observing how doors 
were being opened for missionaries and missionary 
work in China decided to provide as soon as possible 
all the missionaries that were needed for beginning 
work in each of the districts in its field. In order to 
reach this goal, forty-eight missionaries were sent to 
China in twelve years. The China Mission Society 
had started work at three places. The United Nor- 
wegian Church added four more main stations. 


136 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


The United Norwegian Church was confronted also 
with the necessity of providing more adequate build- 
ings. A man was sent to China to superintend the 
building operations. Missionaries’ houses, churches, 
chapels, classrooms, dormitories for two high schools 
and a hospital were erected. The United Norwegian 
Church also co-operated in providing buildings for the 
joint Lutheran theological seminary and the joint 
school for missionaries’ children. 

Chinese workers were needed as badly as buildings. 
In order to fill this want, the training of evangelists, 
Bible women and teachers was attempted from the 
beginning. At first each missionary had private train- 
ing schools; but later the mission opened schools for 
evangelists, which provided a three years’ course of 
study. A school for the training of Bible women also 
was established. 

Meanwhile plans for more advanced school work 
were adopted and a high school for boys was begun. 
The original plan to combine a theological seminary 
with this school was abandoned when the Lutheran 
missions established the joint Lutheran theological 
seminary. Later plans were made to add a college de- 
partment to the high school and negotiations were 
pending with the other missions in China to estab- 
lish a joint Lutheran college, but it was decided that 
the time had not yet come for such an undertaking. 
In the meantime the high school for boys continued 
as such with an additional class for the training of 
native evangelists. A high school for girls also had 
been established. Thus gradually native workers were 
secured and the mission undertook an extended and 
successful evangelistic work. 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—CHINA = 187 


Among the first buildings erected in the field were a 
hospital and two dispensaries, and more or less med- 
ical work was done at all stations. 

During the time that the United Norwegian Church 
conducted its foreign missionary work, conditions on 
the field improved, the work prospered and interest in 
foreign missions steadily increased. Urgent requests 
from the field led the United Norwegian Church to 
send an official representative to be present at the 
dedication of the theological seminary in China and 
to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary in Madagas- 
car. The mission secretary, Rev. M. Saterlie, was sent. 
The festivals celebrated in the foreign fields were days 
of rest and rejoicing, and they were followed by a 
strong forward movement. 


THE CHINA MISSION OF THE NORWEGIAN SYNOD 


The Synod of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran 
Church of America, previous to the year 1912, had 
been engaged principally in home missions, educa- 
tional and charity work, missionary work among sail- 
ors, immigrants, and Mormons in Utah. Foreign mis- 
sionary work on a small scale had been carried on 
among American Indians, and Eskimos in Alaska, and 
support had been given to the Schreuder mission in 
South Africa; but it was felt more and more that the 
foreign missionary work done by the synod was not 
what it could be and ought to be; and the duty as well 
as the necessity of beginning independent and ener- 
getic work in non-Christian lands was frequently and 
earnestly urged. 

In 1911 the president of the synod, Dr. H. G. Stub, 
reported to the annual meeting that interest in for- 


1388 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


eign missions had increased greatly among students 
at the theological seminary; that a member of the 
missionary society of the students had volunteered, 
God willing, to go to whatever foreign field the synod 
might send him, and that the society had promised 
to pay at least a part of his salary. The president 
earnestly pleaded with the synod for more vigorous 
effort on behalf of foreign missions. A committee was 
appointed to study the matter carefully and to report 
at the next synodical meeting. This committee re- 
ported in 1912 that many favored taking over the 
Schreuder mission in South Africa as the foreign mis- 
sion of the Church, while others suggested some other 
field either in Africa or Japan. After careful consid- 
eration the committee decided that China presented 
the greatest opportunities and proposed that the synod 
begin its own mission in China, that a field be selected 
in the province of Honan or in an adjoining province, 
that two missionaries be sent to China in 1912, and 
that the Church be encouraged to pray the Lord of 
the harvest to bless this new undertaking and to pro- 
vide the laborers and means that were needed. This re- 
port was adopted by the synod. The committee named 
above was continued with instructions to serve as a 
temporary Board of Foreign Missions. A missionary 
was called to go to China and the Church Council, to 
which the arrangement of details had been committed, 
sent Rev. J. R. Birkelund, M.D., to China to make in- 
vestigations and to offer recommendations concerning 
the location of the field and the details of the work 
which the synod had decided to undertake. Dr. 
Birkelund recommended that the synod locate its field 
in the southeastern part of the province of Honan, ad- 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—CHINA = 1389 


joining the field of the United Norwegian Church. 
This the synod approved at its special meeting in 1913. 

Meanwhile repeated calls for volunteers had gone 
forth and during 1918 nine missionaries were called. 
Later four additional missionaries were sent out. In 
many ways 1913 was a banner year for the China mis- 
sion of the synod. During the winter of 1914-15 work 
was begun in the city of Kwangchow, the center of 
the field. By the spring of 1915 two acres and a half 
of land were bought. ‘Securing land, however, is by 
no means the only difficulty to overcome when a new 
mission is to be started. Erecting buildings is another 
one of the difficulties. The foreigner who is to build 
in China needs to be as wise as Solomon and as pa- 
tient as Job.” In a comparatively short time the 
houses needed at Kwangchow were built. Houses 
were erected also at the two other main stations that 
had been opened. The missionaries then had some 
equipment with which to commence work. All this 
was accomplished in about two years. 

In the meantime interest at the home base was rap- 
idly increasing. In 1914 the synod decided to secure 
lots and to build cottages on the Kikungshan, 
where other missions already had put up sum- 
mer homes for missionaries during the hot season. At 
the annual meeting in 1914 the synod also decided to 
co-operate with the Hauge synod, the Augustana synod 
and the United Norwegian Church in conducting the 
American School on the Kikungshan. In 1915-16 
the missionary personnel was increased by sending 
six more missionaries to the field. The synod 
sent a total of eighteen missionaries to China, two of 
whom resigned and returned to the homeland. The 


140 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


temporary organization of the synod’s foreign mission 
work was displaced by a permanent one, when it 
adopted definite rules for its China mission and ap- 
pointed a Board of Foreign Missions. This Board, 
similar to the boards of other Lutheran synods, at 
once began a strong and general campaign of mis- 
sionary education by conducting numerous meetings 
in the interest of foreign missions. 

Dispensary and hospital work had been planned 
from the beginning in conjunction with evangelistic 
and educational work, for sick people are numerous in 
China. During six months 3,277 patients were treated, 
an average of over twenty per day, and during the 
next four months as high as sixty and seventy patients 
a day came to the dispensary for treatment. 

Educational and evangelistic work was conducted 
from the beginning. Primary schools were opened 
and were well attended. They soon became numerous 
and flourishing. The evangelistic work prospered. 
Services were attended by hundreds of Chinese, and 
more would have come if the chapels had been larger. 
Sixty catechumens were enrolled at Kwangchow and 
this number soon increased to one hundred. A new 
and roomy church was built and at the dedication 
festival about two years after the work had been com- 
menced, seven hundred people attended services. In 
other places the work was no less successful. 

The synod’s China mission was carried on for a 
period of approximately four years before the Hauge 
synod, the United Norwegian Church and the Norwe- 
gian Lutheran synod united in 1917, when the mis- 
Sionaries as well as the Church at home thanked God 
for what they had been permitted to accomplish, trust- 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—CHINA 141 


ing that all who by their prayers and gifts had sup- 
ported the mission of the synod also would loyally and 
ardently support the China mission of the Norwegian 
Lutheran Church of America. 


THE UNITED MISSION IN CHINA 


In 1917 after the union of the Hauge synod, the 
United Norwegian Church and the Norwegian synod 
had taken place, the Norwegian Lutheran Church of 
America took charge of their united missions in China 
under the name of the Lutheran United Missions. This 
union of the synods at home and of the missions 
abroad was very helpful and profitable to Church work 
and was hailed with general satisfaction and thanks- 
giving both at home and in the foreign field. When 
the Norwegian Lutheran Church assumed charge of 
the work of the three merged synods, ninety-one mis- 
Sionaries and 493 native workers were at work in the 
foreign fields; thirteen main stations and 130 outsta- 
tions had been opened and forty-two congregations 
had been organized. Hospital and dispensary work 
had been started in three places and eight foreign 
and four native doctors employed. There were four 
high schools, a joint theological seminary, a school 
for the children of missionaries and 160 primary 
schools for natives with 4,896 pupils; 5,176 had been 
baptized and 2,576 catechumens were being prepared 
for baptism. The cash receipts from congregations, 
schools and hospitals amounted to $1,607. Much had 
been accomplished by the China missions of the three 
former synods now united; but among a population of 
approximately seven millions, much more remained to 
be done. 


142 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


A great and arduous task also confronted the 
Church at home. The present generation of Chris- 
tians in the home Church is in duty bound to try its 
utmost to save the present generation of heathen in 
the foreign fields. The Church, therefore, assumed 
the responsibility of making this obligation known to 
its members and make them feel constrained by the 
love of Christ to obey His command to make disciples 
of all nations. It appointed a Board of Foreign Mis- 
sions; rules governing its foreign missions were 
adopted. Two secretaries were appointed to do the 
required office work and attend meetings in the 
churches to plead the cause of foreign missions. The 
Church, moreover, took steps to extend the work of 
the former synods by gradually providing more work- 
ers and as large a budget as possible. The campaign 
of education, started by the former synods, was con- 
tinued among all the congregations of the ,united 
synods. At all annual conventions missionary ser- 
vices and mission festivals were held and offerings 
were received for the missions. The Board of For- 
eign Missions was instructed to present to every dis- 
trict and circuit meeting and to all young people’s 
conventions the cause of foreign missions, and to ar- 
range aS many meetings as possible at which the peo- 
ple were to be asked to support this branch of Church 
work. Field secretaries were employed to assist the 
office secretaries and missionaries on furlough to con- 
duct these meetings. In this manner a widespread in- 
terest was aroused. 

Just preceding the union the synods were more or 
less busy settling their old accounts and taking other 
steps preparatory to union; and for some time after 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—CHINA § 143 


the union the Norwegian Lutheran Church was busy 
setting its house in order both financially and other- 
wise. For years no buildings were erected on the for- 
eign field until, finally, conditions became unbearable 
and the Church commenced collecting a special build- 
ing fund. 

The auxiliary organizations of the Church con- 
tinued their work in supporting foreign missions. The 
Women’s Missionary Federation, a combination of 
the federations of the former synods, in order to 
reach every missionary organization in all congrega- 
tions, organized federations in every district of the 
Church. This society and the district federations are 
doing very effective work in arousing interest in for- 
eign missions among the women of the Church. The 
Young People’s Luther League, as well as the students 
of the Church schools, also have faithfully supported 
this branch of Church work, both financially and 
otherwise. 

Unfortunately financial difficulties caused by the 
World War made it impossible to promote the work 
as rapidly as conditions in the foreign field demanded. 
Comparatively few missionaries could be sent to the 
foreign field and comparatively few buildings could 
be erected. The work of foreign missions has been 
hampered because of the lack of workers, buildings 
and money, while the Church faced not only a tre- 
mendous task and great responsibility in China but 
also a wonderful opportunity, because the Lord had 
placed before it a door into China more open than 
ever before. 

When the three China missions had been combined, 
a superintendent was appointed to have charge and 


144 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


oversight of the work on the field. Rev. C. W. 
Landahl has held this office ever since the union. 
Otherwise the work has been continued as it had been 
conducted by the former three synods; and in spite 
of all handicaps it has prospered and grown. In seven 
years the number of outstations has increased to 208, 
congregations to 72, native workers to 628, pupils in 
the missions schools to 8,058, baptized members to 
6,801; and a new hospital building has been erected. 
At the three hospitals and the three dispensaries be- 
tween twenty and thirty thousand patients annually 
are treated. The income from the Chinese congrega- 
tions, schools and hospitals has increased to $10,201. 

One of the most important events of this period 
was the organization of the Lutheran synod of Honan 
and Hupeh, which occurred in 1923, when delegates 
and other church members met at Sinyang, one of the 
oldest and most important of the stations in the east- 
ern part of the field. A tentative constitution was 
adopted, officers were elected and the machinery 
needed to operate the synod was created. Even a 
part of the required budget was raised. But other 
matters besides the organization of the synod were 
considered by the assembly, such as the relation of 
synod, district and congregation to each other; and 
their relation to the Lutheran Church in China. The 
’ fact was emphasized that the aim of the home Church 
in its foreign fields is the establishment of a self-sup- 
porting, self-governing and self-propagating Church, 
and that the organization of the synod was an avowal 
that the daughter Church would try to realize the aim 
of the mother Church. 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—CHINA 145 


Medical missionaries in many cases are the advance 
agents of evangelistic work. No work done by mis- 
sionaries in China is appreciated as much as the med- 
ical work. Even if non-Christians do not understand 
a Christian sermon, they readily understand the help 
they get at a Christian hospital, and gradually they 
learn that the medical mission work is a part of the 
whole work of the Church to save the souls as well as 
to relieve the bodily ills of men. After a wealthy and 
prominent Chinese official had been cured of a disease 
by one of our medical missionaries, he decided that the 
Chinese themselves ought to undertake medical work. 
Building funds were raised and a large, up-to-date 
hospital was erected in the city of Sinyang. The 
Chinese are paying the running expenses, while a doc- 
tor and a nurse, belonging to the mission, at the re- 
quest of the Chinese, superintend the medical and 
evangelistic work. 

But what can a handful of foreign doctors do among 
the multitudes of sick people in our foreign field? The 
attention of the Church was called to this question and 
immediately it became evident that something must be 
done to train Chinese Christian doctors. The home 
Church, as well as its missionaries in China, also 
realized that there was no prospect of ever establish- 
ing a Lutheran medical college. They, therefore, de- 
cided to co-operate in the medical department of the 
Shantung Christian University by appointing one of 
the missionaries, Rev. Louis H. Braafladt, M.D., Ph.D., 
to be a member of its medical faculty and by paying a 
part of the running expenses of this university, with 
the understanding that Prof. Dr. Braafladt shall have 


146 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


unhindered supervision over the Lutheran students at- 
tending this school. 

If China ever is to be Christianized, which grad- 
ually it will be, it must be done by Chinese workers. 
The missionary soon finds that he is handicapped in 
many ways. There are serious language difficulties, 
and in spite of all his efforts to understand the people 
and to sympathize with them, the foreign missionary 
never can have the same influence with the people as 
the native Christian. Neither can he, unaided, reach 
the masses with the gospel. He must have native 
workers, the more the better. The systematic training 
of native workers, therefore, is of the utmost impor- 
tance; and training schools are established as soon as 
work in the field has been begun. Usually this effort 
began with the intermittent training or private in- 
struction in small classes. The next step was the es- 
tablishment of Bible schools with more systematic 
training and a course of study covering a period of 
three years. The students, as a rule, had no prepara- 
tory training and comparatively few attended the 
Bible schools. Not enough by far were trained to 
supply the outstations of the mission, and untrained 
helpers had to be employed. In the beginning native 
helpers with very little training had to be engaged to 
teach primary schools, and some of them could do 
no more than teach the children to read and mem- 
orize Luther’s Small Catechism. Similar conditions 
prevail more or less in all pioneer work and they are 
often prolonged because missionaries and dollars are 
so few. 

Later in the mission attempts were made to provide 
more adequate training for evangelists and teachers. 


147 








148 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


The mission now conducts two senior high schools, 
one for boys and one for girls. In these high schools 
the following departments are to be developed: a col- 
lege preparatory, a Bible department to train evan- 
gelists and Bible women, and a normal school depart- 
ment to train teachers for the primary schools. By 
this plan the mission hopes to secure well-trained 
native workers. Some provision also has been made 
for training native workers in the two junior high 
schools. Furthermore, the Church of Sweden has es- 
tablished a college in the field of the Norwegian Mis- 
sionary Society, which is co-operating in this school. 
This gives other Lutheran missions an opportunity 
to obtain a Lutheran college training for graduates of 
their senior high schools. Moreover, the Joint Luth- 
eran Theological Seminary will provide an ever in- 
creasing number of well-trained Chinese pastors. 


THE PRESENT FIELD 


As already noted, the former Hauge synod occupied 
as its field the northwestern corner of Hupeh and the 
adjoining part of Honan province, where at the time 
of the union it carried on work in four main station 
districts. The China Mission Society had a field in 
southern Honan, which later was transferred to the 
former United Norwegian Church. In this field work 
was done in six districts. The former Norwegian 
synod had work in four cities with their surrounding 
territory, adjoining the field of the United Norwegian 
Church. When the three missions were united, the 
combined fields included a large territory covering 
fifteen hsien districts or counties, having an area of 
about seventeen thousand square miles and a popula- 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—CHINA 149 


tion of approximately seven millions. This is the 
present China mission field of the Norwegian Luth- 
eran Church of America. 

The Peking-Hankow railroad crosses the field in 
South Honan, making this part of the field easily ac- 
cessible. This is fortunate, because on this railroad 
line is located the Missionary Home and Agency, the 
Union Theological Seminary, the American School and 
the Language School in Peking, which the new mis- 
sionaries attend. As for the western part, the former 
Hauge synod field, travel by boat from Hankow up 
the Han River up to the present time has been the 
most convenient route. Recently, however, an auto- 
bus line has been in operation from the western to the 
eastern part of the field. The trip can now be made 
in a day. 

The other Scandinavian Lutheran missions in Cen- 
tral China are the following: in the province of Honan 
to the south are the Norwegian and Finnish mission- 
ary societies, the Church of Sweden and the Missouri 
synod missions; to the west in Honan province is the 
Lutheran Brotherhood mission; to the north in Honan, 
in Shantung and in Manchuria, the Augustana synod, 
the Lutheran Free Church, the United Lutheran 
Church, formerly the Berlin Missionary Society, and 
the Danish Missionary Society have their fields. The 
more intimately one becomes acquainted with the lo- 
cation of these fields, the more evident it becomes that 
their selection was not a haphazard choice, but that 
God led the Lutheran missions to these fields. Their 
location is in many ways most fortunate, because these 
fields practically are adjacent, so that co-operation be- 
tween them can easily be secured. 


150 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


THE UNION LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 


The Lutheran missions in China have advanced far- 
ther in theological education than along other lines of 
school work. The Union Lutheran Theological Sem- 
inary was established a few years after high school 
work had been begun and before any definite steps 
had been taken to establish a college. The missionary 
work in China, conducted by our Lutheran churches 
in America, has as its aim the organization of Luth- 
eran congregations and the establishment of a Luth- 
eran Church in China. Lutheran doctrines have been 
preached and taught, and the church organization, 
church government and church work have been given 
a Lutheran form. Missionaries and mission boards 
soon became aware of the need of a Lutheran theolog- 
ical seminary to train Lutheran pastors. In 1907, at 
the Centenary convention in Shanghai, Lutheran del- 
egates at that convention for the first time met to 
discuss co-operation in certain branches of work, of 
which the establishment of a joint Lutheran theolog- 
ical seminary claimed the most attention. Other 
union conferences discussed this matter and finally 
in 1913 the Union Lutheran Theological Seminary 
was established at Shekow, ten miles northeast of 
Hankow, from which it can be reached by train or 
auto. The seminary building was dedicated in the fall 
of 1918. The Churches and societies co-operating in 
this seminary are the Norwegian and Finnish Mis- 
Sionary Societies, the Augustana synod, the Luth- 
eran Free Church and the Norwegian Lutheran 
Church of America. At present the faculty consists 
of four foreign professors and a Chinese assistant 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—CHINA 151 


professor, Hsieh Su-lin, who, supported by the Nor- 
wegian Lutheran Church, spent three years as a stu- 
dent in our Church’s schools in America. The mem- 
bers of the faculty from the Norwegian Lutheran 
Church are Rev. O. R. Wold, D.D., the president of 
the seminary, and Rev. Erik Sovik. Three years are 
required to complete the course of study which is sub- 
stantially the same as in the homeland. The estab- 
lishment of this seminary was a very decided forward 
step in Lutheran missionary work in China. 

Interary Work.—When Scandinavian Lutheran mis- 
sionaries came to China, they found well established 
missions of the Reformed Churches. These were doing 
not only evangelistic, educational and medical work, 
but also literary work. German Lutherans also had 
published tracts, pamphlets, devotional books and sev- 
eral commentaries, far superior to anything published 
by other missions. Unfortunately their books were 
published in a dialect understood only by the more 
highly educated. The Reformed missions had pub- 
lished Christian literature of almost every kind, much 
of which Lutherans cannot use. In Lutheran mission 
work Lutheran literature is indispensable and soon 
such books as Luther’s Catechism, Bible Histories, and 
other books were published. Up to 1917 very little 
was done by Scandinavian Lutherans along this line 
of work. But the increasing demand for Lutheran lit- 
erature had to be met. The union Lutheran confer- 
ences, which started other Lutheran undertakings, 
also directed the attention of the Scandinavian mis- 
sions to the need of Lutheran literature. In 1917 a 
joint board was appointed to assume charge of lit- 
erary work, and Rev. I. Daehlin, one of the mission- 


152 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


aries of the Norwegian Lutheran Church, was ap- 
pointed to do literary work only. Furthermore, Mr. 
C. H. Chen, a graduate of our theological seminary in 
China, who, supported by our Church, for a period of 
four years has attended our schools in America, is 
preparing himself for literary work. Besides text 
books for primary schools and high schools and devo- 
tional books, text books in Church history, dogmatics 
and symbolics and a number of commentaries already 
have been published. A Lutheran hymnal has also 
been printed. 

The American School.—That missionaries’ children 
are entitled to education similar to that in the home- 
land, is self-evident; but how to provide schools in a 
foreign land similar to those at home is a most diffi- 
cult problem. Such schools, however, must be estab- 
lished if missionaries, who have children of school age, 
are to remain in the field. Consequently, steps were 
soon taken in the various missions to provide schools 
for the children of the missionaries. In 1901 the 
Hauge synod opened a school for the children of its 
missionaries. The United Norwegian Church started 
a similar school in the eastern part of the present 
field; but in neither missions were adequate buildings 
and equipment provided. Then a union movement was 
started and the Unity School, as it was called, was 
formally opened in 1913. This school was jointly es- 
tablished by the Hauge synod, the Augustana synod 
and the United Norwegian Church. Later the Norwe- 
gian synod, the Lutheran Free Church and the Luth- 
eran Brotherhood missions co-operated. Two large 
up-to-date buildings and a residence for the rector 
have been built. The curriculum includes an eight 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—CHINA 153 


year elementary school and a four year high school 
course. The special aim and purpose of the school is 
to provide a distinctly Christian training; and 
throughout the whole course religious training goes 
hand in hand with the regular school work. In this 
way one of the many perplexing questions of foreign 
missions has been solved. Were it not for this school, 
many of the missionaries in all probability would be 
compelled to return to the homeland to care for their 
children at the time when they are especially in need 
of home influence and the watchful care of parents. 
None of the co-operating missions single-handed could 
have financed the establishment and maintenance of 
such a school. 

The Lutheran Missions’ Home and Agency.— 
Churches doing missionary work in China need accom- 
modations for transient missionaries and agencies to 
take care of business transactions pertaining to mis- 
sionary work. The China Inland Mission built homes 
and agencies in three central locations in China, and 
other missions have had to provide similar accommo- 
dations and business agencies. The need for such a 
home and agency was soon realized by the Lutheran 
missions in central China, and the Board of Foreign 
Missions of the United Norwegian Church began ne- 
gotiations with other Lutheran Churches and societies, 
whose fields were in the vicinity of Hankow, relative 
to the establishment of a Lutheran Home and Agency 
in that city. The United Norwegian Church, which 
conducted such a home anda agency for a number of 
years, found that the majority of the Lutheran 
Churches and societies, having just begun their mis- 
sionary operations, were unable to join in the under- 


154 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


taking and decided to discontinue the enterprise. 
Lutheran missionaries in central China thereafter had 
to avail themselves of the accommodations offered by 
other agencies in Hankow. But the number of mis- 
sionaries and the business of the missions increased 
so rapidly, and the non-Lutheran homes and agencies 
became so crowded, that in 19238 six Lutheran mis- 
sions decided to build a Lutheran Home and Agency 
at Hankow. The building was completed in 1924. The 
property is centrally located, near the railway sta- 
tion, banks, steamship agencies and the American con- 
sulate. Two of its nearest neighbors are the houses 
of the American Bible Society and of the Central 
China Tract Society. The building is roomy and well 
equipped. In it Lutheran missionaries may find ac- 
commodations while staying in Hankow; and all their 
business may be transacted there, such as securing 
passage on steamships, getting their goods from the 
homeland through the customs and reshipping them 
to their fields, and arranging for the shipment of 
building materials to the mission stations. This home 
and agency is to be also the headquarters for con- 
ducting business meetings, storing literature, station- 
ery, books and other goods. It, therefore, serves as a 
hotel and business center for the Lutheran missions 
in China. 

The Lutheran Church of China.—On Tuesday, 
August 24, 1920, the Lutheran Church of China was 
organized. This event marks the year 1920 as the 
banner year in the history of Lutheran missions in 
China. It is evident that such an organization could 
not be accomplished without considerable preliminary 
work. The question of establishing a Chinese Luth- 


NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH—CHINA 155 


eran Church had been discussed at several union 
Lutheran conferences. The various missions should 
organize synods and the Lutheran Church of China 
was to be the federation of these synods. Committees 
to prepare constitutions for synods and for the Church 
were appointed. Others were entrusted with the prep- 
aration of a union church book, union pericopes, 
and a common liturgy. When the preliminary work 
had been completed, representatives from the mis- 
sions of the Norwegian Missionary Society, the Finn- 
ish Missionary Society, the Augustana Synod’s China 
mission and the Norwegian Lutheran Church’s China 
mission met, August 22 to 29, 1920, and organized the 
Lutheran Church of China. A constitution approved 
by the home boards was adopted, and officers were 
elected. At its meeting in 1923, Rev. N. Astrup Larsen 
was chosen as president. Since its organization the 
Lutheran Free Church’s China mission and the Brek- 
lum mission have joined. Regular meetings are to be 
held every three years. 

Thirty years ago the first Scandinavian Lutheran 
missionaries landed in China. They were mission- 
aries of the Hauge synod and of the United Norwegian 
Church. The Augustana synod began its work in 
1906, the Norwegian and Finnish Missionary So- 
cieties in 1902 and 1908, respectively ; and the Church 
of Sweden has just started its work. The Lord has 
prospered the work to such an extent that a Chinese 
Church has been organized after so brief a period of 
missionary effort. The Chinese Christians seem to 
realize their responsibility. At the organization meet- 
ing of the indigenous Church several lectures were de- 
livered by Chinese teachers and pastors. One, speak- 


156 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


ing of self-support, asserted that the progress of the 
work depends on well-trained, gifted, whole-hearted, 
intelligent workers and congregations. Another pas- 
tor emphasized the necessity of being careful in the 
choice of workers, better training schools, a closer 
union with God, and the assurance of His help. What 
hath God wrought! A few years ago Christ and His 
gospel were unknown: now a Chinese Christian 
Church exists with a membership of fourteen thou- 
sand disciples of the divine Master and Saviour. “This 
is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” 


CHAPTER VII. 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD 
F. W. WYMAN 
CHINA AND AFRICA 


From its very beginning the Augustana synod has 
been interested in foreign missions. As early as 
1861 the following resolution was adopted: “That a 
committee on foreign missions be appointed and that 
this committee shall try to encourage work for for- 
elgn missions, to receive and remit donations in ac- 
cordance with the wishes of the different congrega- 
tions or individual donors or, if no such directions are 
given, to Swedish or Norwegian missionary societies.” 

This resolution was received with great favor by 
the congregations of the synod. The missionary cause 
began to be more and more a matter of thought and 
prayer. Money began to come in, which was dis- 
tributed between the Swedish Missionary Society for 
its work in India and the Hermannsburg Missionary 
Society. During the first few months $223.61 was 
received. For several years the synod continued to 
support the Hermannsburg society, the Swedish mis- 
sionary society and the Norwegian missionary society. 
In 1875, Dr. O. Olson called the attention of the synod 
to the American Indians, and $15,000 was gathered 
in a very short time. Dr. John Telleen was the first 
missionary. The plan was to have the Commissioner 

157 


158 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


of Indian Affairs assign a certain Indian tribe to the 
Augustana synod. The assignment was promised, buv 
never made. At the synodical meeting in Des 
Moines, Iowa, in 1880, it was voted that the synod 
should help support the mission of the General Coun- 
cil among the Telugu people in India. Then later 
Porto Rico was included; and the Augustana synod 
has supported the work in these two fields to the 
present day. For several years the synod also sup- 
ported the work of Rev. Knanishu Morat Khan, and 
later that of his son, Rev. Joseph Knanishu, in Oroom- 
iah, Persia. The work among the Telugus in India is — 
described elsewhere in this book, and for that reason 
the following pages will be devoted to the work of 
the synod in China and Africa. 


CHINA 


In the year 1900 the terrible Boxer uprising oc- 
curred in China. Thousands of Christian Chinese were 
killed and many missionaries sacrificed their lives. 
The whole civilized world was shocked. Western 
powers sent troops to China, blood flowed, and indem- 
nities were exacted from the Chinese government for 
the loss of life and property. The Christian Church 
throughout the world saw in this uprising not a men- 
ace to dampen its missionary ardor, but an incentive 
to greater activity. China, with its teeming millions, 
had been neglected by the Church. China needed the 
gospel of Jesus Christ, which alone can raise a na- 
tion. The Augustana synod at this time was repre- 
sented in the foreign field by two ordained married 
men in India, and all its funds were sent for the sup- 
port of the work of the General Council, of which the 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD—CHINA 159 


synod was a constituent part. The total income from 
all sources for the year 1900 was $9,848.06. There 
were many in the synod who were praying the Lord 
of the Harvest to send more laborers into His great 
fields, and some pastors and laymen felt that the synod 
should have its own field. This desire became a matter 
of earnest prayer, which culminated in a meeting held 
in the parsonage of the Swedish Lutheran Bethlehem 
Church, Minneapolis, Minn., in 1901. At this meet- 
ing the foreign mission cause was earnestly discussed 
and, after a returned missionary from China who hap- 
pened to be present had made a strong appeal for 
that country, it was decided to call a conference of all 
interested persons on September 3 and 4, in the Beth- 
lehem Church. This meeting was well attended. Dr. 
P. A. Mattson, of Minneapolis, presided. Rev. C. J. 
Collin, of New London, delivered an address on the 
subject: “The debt of our Church to the heathen 
world.” During the second day of the meeting there 
was a long and earnest discussion as to the advisabil- 
ity of taking up work in foreign fields and organizing 
an independent society within the synod. It was 
unanimously voted to launch out into the deep and or- 
ganize such a society with the object of carrying on 
foreign missionary work in such field or fields as God 
should direct. 

A second meeting was held on April 8, 1902, at 
which a constitution was drawn up and adopted. The 
following officers were elected: President, Dr. P. A. 
Mattson; Vice President, Rev. C. J. Carlson; Secre- 
tary, Rev. J. G. Hultkrans. The first Board members 
were: Dr. A. F. Almer, Rev. C. A. Hultkrans, Rev. O. 
A. Nelson, Dr. E. O. Stone, Rev. C. J. Collin, Rev. J. 


160 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


A. Frost, Mr. G. W. Olson and Mr August Peterson. 
The first officers of the Board were: President, Dr. A. 
FE’. Almer; Vice President, Dr. E. O. Stone; Secretary, 
Rev. C. A. Hultkrans, and Treasurer, Rev. O. A. 
Nelson. At the next meeting held in the Swedish 
Lutheran Gustavus Adolphus Church in St. Paul, 
Minn., November 21, 1902, it was decided to publish 
a monthly magazine to promote greater interest in 
missions and to disseminate missionary knowledge. It 
was called The Lutheran Monthly, with the subtitle, 
For Foreign Missions and the Deaconess Cause. Its 
first editors were Dr. A. F. Almer, for foreign mis- 
sions; and Rev. C. A. Hultkrans, for the deaconess 
work. The first two numbers consisted of only eight 
pages, but it was soon enlarged to sixteen pages. The 
first number was published in January, 1903. This 
little magazine was received with great enthusiasm 
and the subscription list grew from month to month. 
In 1908 the name was changed to The China Mission- 
ary, and the magazine was devoted exclusively to for- 
eign missions. 

At a meeting of the Board on January 28, 1903, it 
was decided to get into touch with fields in China, 
Africa and Korea, to find out where a mission could 
be started. Not until 1906 did God point out our 
present field in Honan, China. 

During all this time the Board had been looking 
for some pastor who would volunteer to become its 
first missionary. On August 31, 1903, Mr. S. G. Hagg- 
lund, of the Augustana Theological Seminary, was 
called, but declined. In the meantime the Board tried 
to awaken more missionary interest in the home 
Church through missionary conferences, articles — 


€ 


‘VNIHD ‘NVNOH ‘NANVNOH LV ‘776] NI GaZILdVa SNVILSIYHD AAILVN JO dNowd Vv 





‘VNIHO ‘NVNOH ‘MOHONA LV ANOH SNVHd¥O AHL WOW NANATIHD AO ano 





AUGUSTANA SYNOD—CHINA 161 


in the Church papers and otherwise. The response 
was wonderful. From everywhere came money and 
encouraging letters and the membership of the society 
grew fast. 

When God’s own time came He gave the society the 
right man for the task. At the Board meeting in St. 
Paul on December 1, 1904, after an earnest prayer for 
God’s guidance by Rev. C. A. Hultkrans, Dr. A. W. 
Edwins, then pastor of the Swedish Lutheran Trin- 
ity Church of Stillwater, Minn., was called to go out 
as a missionary to China. Dr. Edwins answered in 
the affirmative at the annual meeting of the Mission- 
ary Society held at Center, Minn., February 13-14, 
1905. At this meeting there was great rejoicing and 
thanksgiving for the way in which the Lord of the 
Harvest had answered prayers and had called the first 
missionary. On September 14, 1905, a big missionary 
meeting was held in Gustavus Adolphus Church, St. 
Paul, and another on the following day in the Augus- 
tana Church, Minneapolis, where in the evening a fare- 
well meeting for Dr. Edwins was held. After his ad- 
dress he was commissioned as the first missionary of 
the society. The following day, September 15, Dr. 
and Mrs. Edwins began their long journey to China. 
They sailed on September 20, on the steamship “Da- 
kota,” from Seattle, Wash., and landed at Shanghai on 
October 21, 1905, in the company of four missionaries 
from Sweden and Norway. After a journey by 
_ steamer up the Yangtse River to Hankow, they pro- 
_ ceeded to the city of Fancheng in the province of 
Hupeh, where the Norwegian Hauge synod has a sta- 
tion. Here they became the guests of the mission- 
aries for over six months and were most cordially 


162 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


treated and encouraged for their work in China. 

The next step was to find a mission field. In the 
spring of 1906, Rev. Dr. Edwins had the good fortune 
to accompany Rev. H. N. Ronning, Rev. C. W. Landahl 
and a native teacher, Mr. Leh, also in the service of 
the Hauge synod, on a missionary tour through the 
provinces of Hupeh, Honan and Chihli. The journey 
began on Tuesday, April 24, from the city of Fan- 
cheng. They started at 6:30 A. M. in order to reach a 
village by the name of Sinyeh, about 120 lz, or 40 miles, 
north of Fancheng. By noon they had gotten only 
halfway. They ate dinner, rested and were called on 
by the resident mandarin. In the afternoon they met 
several members of a robber band with long spears, 
one of whom carried a foreign gun. Because they 
were going in the same direction as the missionaries, 
they were asked to join the party, but declined. They 
did not attempt to do any harm. At 8:80 P. M. the 


missionaries arrived at Sinyeh, where Rev. Himle was — 


stationed. He was then in the United States on his 
furlough, but the missionaries were well received by 
the Chinese Christians. Rev. Landahl conducted an 
evening devotion with the servants. Next morning 
divine service was conducted by Rev. Ronning. 

In Sinyeh another cart was hired, so that all could 


ride. At 10 A. M. they began the journey to Teng- — 


chow, a distance of about twenty-four miles. At 


about three o’clock in the afternoon they approached ! 


a small village, where an open-air theatre was going 
on. An immense crowd had gathered, making it 
nearly impossible to pass through in the narrow 
street. We shall let Dr. Edwins relate his first ex- 
perience with a heathen mob that day. “When we 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD—CHINA 163 


came up the street the crowd gave way slowly with a 
great deal of noise and tumult. Ronning and myself 
rode in the first cart, so it fell to the lot of our driver 
to plow his way through the crowd. Things were going 
on quite well, but the driver became a little too anxious 
to get along quickly, for as he tried to drive at a 
somewhat brisk walk, the clumsy two-wheeled cart 
made heavy lurches, first to one side then to the other. 
These lurches made the cart get out of the old ruts 
and it hit the basket of a boy selling biscuits. The 
biscuits rolled down the street and were eagerly 
picked up by the thievish crowd. The boy set up a 
big howl and others joined him. Although we could 
not avoid hitting his basket, yet, I suppose, both he 
and the others with him thought we were the only 
ones to blame. We finally got through the crowd and 
left them behind us. As soon as we had reached the 
extreme end of the village we were surprised by a 
fusillade that we will not soon forget. As luck would 
have it, there were no stones within reach, but dried 
clay from a newly plowed field was used with the 
greatest skill by the wild rabble. We who rode in 
the first cart escaped being hit. Ronning was sitting 
inside of the covered cart and was for that reason not 
hurt. I was sitting on the outside, holding my um- 
brella over my head as a protection against the sun. 
Only one chunk of clay hit my umbrella. I myself 
was not hit at all. Our poor mules had to take the 
brunt of the attack. They were bewildered and it 
seemed as though we were to be held up by the en- 
raged mob. Then the driver of the second cart suc- 
ceeded in passing us, and this encouraged our mules 
to proceed. They started off at a tolerably good trot, 


164 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


and after a quarter of an hour the crowd was out 
of range. Landahl and Leh, who in the beginning 
were behind, got a little more of the attack than we 
who were ahead. One of Landahl’s arms received a 
hard knock and Mr. Leh’s left cheek was bruised. A 
native Christian, who had been with us as messenger 
during the day, had walked on foot, and stayed behind 
when we drove ahead. He thought that he might be 
able to reason with the people. When he reached us 
he was bleeding and dusty and we found out later that 
his life was spared only through the intercession of 
an elderly and more sensible Chinese. We arrived 
at Tengchow quite early Wednesday evening and 
stayed at Missionary Eikrem’s station. He serves a 
Norwegian missionary society. Mr. Eikrem was not 
at home at the time. His young wife and a woman 
missionary, Miss Lasseson, were the only foreigners 
in the big heathen city; but they did not seem to fear 
anything, even though there were rumors of danger 
about. The Lord protects His own.” 

Thursday morning they started on their journey 
early, going towards the city of Nanyang. The man- 
darin gave them a bodyguard of soldiers, without 
which he would not permit them to travel. They did 
not reach Nanyang that day. When evening came they 
still had ten miles to go, so they had to stay over night 
in a small village. Friday morning they reached Nan- 
yang, a station of the Norwegian Lutheran Hauge 
synod, in charge of Rev. and Mrs. Espeegren. Here 
they were told that the vicinity of Nanyang was still 
unoccupied and that several cities could be handed 
over to the Augustana synod, such as Lushan, Hsii- 
chow and Kiahsien. 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD—CHINA 165 


Early Saturday morning they left the city of Nan- 
yang in two clumsy carts, escorted by a number of 
soldiers. About an hour after sundown they reached 
Yiihchow, where they stayed over night. On Sunday 
morning they were up at five o’clock, and traveled 
through a mountainous district, over very rough roads, 
and made only thirty miles the whole day. On Mon- 
day they traveled through beautiful districts, passed 
the city of Yehsien, had dinner in Rufenkiao and then 
proceeded on their way in order to reach the city of 
Hiangcheng, a station of the China Inland Mission, 
before sundown. But things went slow. The mules 
were tired and the driver sleepy. The missionaries 
began to fear that they were not going to reach their 
goal that day. Then it began to get cloudy and a rain- 
storm threatened, the wind began to blow and off the 
mules went in a gallop. The Chinese are very much 
afraid of rain, and this circumstance helped the mis- 
sionaries, so that they reached Hiangcheng at four 
o’clock in the afternoon. They found Mr. F. 8. Joyce 
in charge of the China Inland Mission station. He had 
worked all alone in this wide territory, and had done 
all he could do. But Hiangcheng was big enough for 
three or four missionaries working all the time. Dr. 
G. W. Guiness also happened to be at Hiangcheng. Mr. 
Joyce invited our men for supper and they were glad 
for the invitation, as it gave them an opportunity to 
speak about the fields in Honan. After supper Mr. 
Joyce brought forth maps and they all fell to studying 
and discussing the province of Honan. The result was 


that the missionaries of the China Inland Mission bade 
the missionaries of the Augustana synod welcome 
in the name of God, and offered to divide this extensive 


166 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


field with them. It was then decided that the Augustana 
synod should begin its work in the city of Hsiichow, 
located on the Peking-Hankow line. From the city 
of Hsiichow the field extends toward the west, south- 
west and northwest, forming a triangle. 

Dr. Edwins tells of this eventful evening in the home 
of Mr. Joyce in the following words: ‘‘Hardly at any 
time during my whole life have I experienced such 
joy as that which filled my soul when it became clear 
that we really had gotten a field assigned to us where 
we can help to make our dear Saviour known to the 
benighted people of China. What grace God doth 
show towards unworthy and sinful beings! The ways 
of the Lord are wonderful! Why was the mob allowed 
to close the road we originally intended to take? On 
that account we had to take the northern route, and 
thus we came to these friends; and they were there 
through the providence of God. Had we been per- 
mitted to travel when we first intended to do so, we 
would surely not have met them both. But God hears 
prayers. Before we cry, He will answer. While we 
are yet talking, He will hear. Dr. Guiness suggested 
that we should pray together before parting and thank 
God. We poured out our hearts in quietness and sim- 
plicity to Him who dwells on high and yet looks upon 
the humble and dwells with His Spirit in their 
hearts.” 


On Tuesday, May Ist, the party left Hiangcheng 
and started for Hsitichow at about five o’clock in the 
morning. The city was only thirty miles from Hiang- 
cheng, and they reached that place early. Thus Dr. 
Edwins made his first entry into the city destined to 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD—CHINA 167 


become the main station of the Augustana synod mis- 
sion in Honan. 

The province of Honan is one of the most important 
provinces of China. Its area is 67,940 square miles. 
It is divided into four tao, or sections, and these again 
are subdivided into 108 hsiens, or counties, Until re- 
cently the capital city was Kaifeng, but, during the 
troublesome times of the last two years, it has been 
removed to the city of Honanfu, perhaps only tem- 
porarily, on account of the fighting between Wu-Pei- 
Fu and Chang-Cho-Lin, the Manchurian war-lord. 
From ‘The Chinese Empire,” by Marshall Broomhall, 
we quote a very good description of Honan. ‘‘Con- 
ceive a vast plain, bordered by mountains on its west- 
ern side, and crossed by streams running at right 
angles to those mountain ranges—a plain, unrelieved 
by undulating hills, green in the season of growing 
and harvest, but brown for the rest of the year, the 
central part buried in sand and loose deposit brought 
down by the Yellow River. Conceive this plain dotted 
over with cities, towns and villages, and crossed in 
every direction by brown earth roads, wide in the 
northwest and central sections, and narrow and paved 
in the south, teeming with a hardy farming population 
—and you have a picture of Honan south of the Yel- 
low River.” 

The climate is healthy, but the cold winds from the 
north make the winters quite severe. The ther- 
mometer sometimes drops below zero and in the sum- 
mer sometimes rises to 110 degrees. The language 
spoken throughout the province is Mandarin. 

The field of the Augustana synod is located in the 
very heart of the province. At first the boundaries 


i68 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


were not well defined, but, as now decided upon by 
comity agreements with all the neighboring missions, 
the field takes the shape of a shoe, with the lines pro- 
ceeding from the Yellow River due south, passing 
through the city of Honanfu and the town of Iyang, 
then southeast from Iyang to Kiahsien, northeast from 
Kiahsien to Hstichow, then north to Changko and from 
Changko northwest to Yenshih, and from that town 
north to the Yellow River. In 1924 the Weichuan 
district northeast of Changko was taken over from 
the China Inland Mission. 

The Augustana synod is now working in thirteen 
hsiens. The main stations are Hstichow on the 
Peking-Hankow R. R., a city of about 50,000 popula- 
tion, including the suburbs. At this place are located 
the Hasselquist School for Boys and the Emmy Ewald 
School for Girls. Ona fine piece of ground the Augus- 
tana Women’s Missionary Society is going to erect 
a $50,000 hospital. There are well-built houses for 
the missionaries and dormitories for the students. A 
Bible school is also located here. The next larg- 
est city is Ytichow, with an estimated population of 
about 40,000. Here are schools for boys and girls, a 
fine newly built church, seating about a thousand; a 
foreign house and an orphans’ home with between 
sixty and seventy inmates. The orphans are being 
taught some trade, especially how to make shoes and 
weave cloth. In Kiahsien, a town of about 20,000, 
there are a school for boys and girls and residences 
for the missionaries. In the town of Jiichow, with a 
population of about 20,000, the mission has fine prop- 
erty both inside and outside the city wall. The work 
at this station is difficult on account of the many rob- 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD—CHINA 169 


ber raids that occur. In Honanfu, the largest city in 
the field, with an estimated population of about 80,000, 
the mission has property both inside and outside the 
city wall. A little way outside the city are three good 
houses for missionaries, a large chapel, schools and a 
big dispensary, where thousands of patients are 
treated every year. In the town of Yenshih (15,000 
to 20,000) thirteen Chinese acres of land have been 
purchased inside the town, a brick wall has been built 
around this property, some Chinese houses are under 
construction, and the foundation has been laid for a 
foreign house. There are several other big towns on 
the field, such as Paofeng, Tengfeng, Changko, Iyang, 
Mengtsin and Weichuan, where no foreign mission- 
aries as yet are stationed, but where property has been 
bought and work is being carried on by Chinese evan- 
gelists and other workers, with occasional visits by 
the missionaries. Then there are many outstations and 
hundreds of villages not yet visited. Outside the bor- 
ders of our field proper, work has been opened in the 
big city of Chengchow, a junction point of the Peking- 
Hankow R. R. and the Lung-Hai R. R. Here work re- 
cently was begun and property secured. At present 
the evangelistic work consists mainly of street chapel 
preaching and class work. In the southwest corner 
of our field is the county of Iyang, which has a popula- 
tion of 142,129, with hundreds of villages. This town 
and county have been taken over entirely by the 
Chinese Christians and is to be controlled and financed 
by the Chinese Lutheran Church. The evangelist from 
Changko, Mr. Su Ging Sing, has been called by the 
Church to work in Iyang and is now there. T'wo coun- 
ties are worked together with the Swedish China Mis- 


170 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


sion (8S. C. I. M.), Honanfu and Mengtsin, the Swedish 
mission working in the western section and the Au- 
gustana synod in the eastern. The entire field has a 
population of over 3,000,000. 


After this brief survey of the field, we again turn 
to the development of the mission. At Hsiichow, Dr. 
and Mrs. Edwins at first lived as guests of the S. C. I. 
M. people. Premises were bought in Hsiichow and occu- 
pied in March, 1908. After the work had been begun 
more missionaries were needed. The Board at home 
called a sister from the Deaconess Institute in St. 
Paul, Sister Ingeborg Nystul, who accepted and ar- 
rived on the field November 24, 1906. In the spring 
of 1908 a medical missionary, Dr. C. P. Friberg, and 
his wife arrived at Hstichow; and late in the fall of 
the same year Rev. and Mrs. Alfred Trued were added 
to our band of workers. Shortly after the arrival of 
these workers, in the spring of 1909, Dr. Edwins 
visited the robber town of Jiichow. He did not suc- 
ceed the first time he went there, but on a second 
visit he succeeded in renting quarters, and work was 
begun with one evangelist and a gatekeeper. 

The year 1908 marks a great event in our China 
mission. In that year the synod met in Chicago and 
took over the work of the China Missionary So- 
ciety, which at that time had between 6,000 and 7,000 
members. The first Board elected was Rev. C. A. 
Hultkrans, Dr. Gustav Andreen, Dr. A. F. Almer, Rev. 
John Torell, who for over five years had served the 
society as Field Secretary; Rev. F. M. Eckman, Mr. 
Aaron Erickson, Mr. August Westlund, Mr. S. P. 
Lofgren and Mr. August Peterson. 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD—CHINA 171 


The occupation of the field then began in earnest. 
The city of Honanfu was opened on October 5, 1909, 
when Dr. and Mrs. Friberg moved from Hstichow to 
that city. Two large buildings and two smaller ones 
were rented at the rate of $38.00 a month. A few 
smaller houses also were rented and used as chapel 
and dispensary. Each patient was charged twenty 
cash, or about half a cent. A Sunday school was begun, 
but the largest number of children in attendance at 
any one time was only fourteen. At the first Christ- 
mas festival there were sixty children present and 
many adults. The small chapel could not hold all 
that wanted to get in. Rev. O. Beinhoff, of the S. C. 
I. M., preached the sermon. The Christmas tree was 
only a modest cypress, decorated in all its glory, and 
small presents were given to the children. 

After property had been rented in Jtichow, Rev. 
and Mrs. Alfred Trued moved to that city in the 
spring of 1910. This place has a very bad reputation 
and the missionaries and Chinese Christians have suf- 
fered from frequent robber raids. In this city the 
missionaries worked with a native evangelist by the 
name of Chia Chen Ho. Besides morning devotion, 
divine service was held every evening in the chapel. 
Often there were large gatherings. What especially 
drew the crowd to the chapel was a small Chinese boy, 
who used to take his stand at the entrance to the mis- 
sion station and with his sweet voice sing several 
Christian hymns before the evening service. This 
would attract the attention of the Chinese and, out of 
curiosity, they would enter the gate of the mission 
station, where the gatekeeper would speak to them 
about God. After a while they would be induced to 


172 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


stay for the service. During the day the evangelist 
would go up and down the streets of the city trying to 
enter homes with the gospel message, and to sell 
Christian literature. , 

The greatest event of 1910 was the first baptismal 
service at which nine adults were baptized. Dr. Edwins 
writes: “The first one to receive baptism in our little 
chapel that day was a gray-haired old man of the same 
age as my own father. Sixty-seven long years he had 
been outside the pale of Christ’s Church, without God, 
hope and peace. Among those baptized at that time 
were two elderly women. This first little ingathering 
on our China field was made just as our Church in 
the homeland was about to celebrate its jubilee. No 
one at home knew then that the first half century of 
our history as a Church included the reaping of these 
first fruits of Christian Chinese.” 

In the year 1910 there was a farther expansion of 
the work. That spring the whole county, including 
the city of Yiichow, was transferred to our mission by 
the 8. C. I. M. This district has many rich coal mines. 
Besides the city there are about forty-six smaller 


towns with a population ranging from one to three 
thousand, and hundreds of small villages. 
About 130 lt southwest of Yiichow lies the county 


seat of Kiahsien. In the spring of 1910, while getting 
a foothold in the two cities mentioned above, the mis- 
sionaries also tried to gain entrance to Kiahsien. The 
first attempt was unsuccessful. After a good deal of 
parleying the missionaries were able to rent a few, 
almost tumbled down buildings for a low rental. “An 
old Christian teacher was sent there to take charge of 
the new station. He soon found out that the owner 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD—CHINA 173 


of our leased premises was being: persecuted for let- 
ting his property to foreigners. He was taken to the 
yamen and beaten for some other and unreal offence; 
and this frightened him so that he ran away from his 
home and kept in hiding, until we voluntarily vacated 
his premises in order to save him from trouble. In 
the meantime others were found who were willing to 
lease buildings to us; but a hostile official made it im- 
possible for us to gain possession of the places that 
were promised. Our old teacher-evangelist went to 
the yamen several times to make inquiries about the 
matter and if possible to remonstrate with the man- 
darin; but his opportunity to meet the mandarin was 
invariably put off on some pretext. Then it seems 
that the old man lost patience and that he expressed 
some idea which proved objectionable to those who 
heard him at the yamen. Then at last he was taken to 
the official, but as a prisoner in heavy iron shackles. 
No punishment was administered; but our man was 
accused of something practically equal to contempt of 
court and sent back to Hsiichow as a prisoner under 
guard of two armed soldiers. There remained noth- 
ing else for us to do than to withdraw from Kiahsien 
for the time being. The following year another at- 
tempt was made, and this time successfully. Rev. Al- 
fred Trued, who had moved to Jiichow, to take care of 
that station, succeeded in buying some very excellent 
property for a mission station in Kiahsien.” At- 
tempts were also made during 1912 to get a foothold 
in Paofeng and Tengfeng. During 1912 the mission- 
aries on the field had the joy of welcoming the follow- 
ing recruits: Rev. Mauritz Hanson, Rev. Walter Lind- 
beck, Dr. O. W. Lindorf, Sisters Thyra Lawson and 


174 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Hannah Engberg. In 1911 and 1912 the work was 
very much disturbed during the turbulent times of the 
rebellion, when the government of China was changed 
from that of the oldest empire in the world to that of 
a republic. During 1918 five persons were added to 
the missionary force: Rev. and Mrs. Victor Swenson, 
Mr. and Mrs. C. O. Forsberg and Miss Hedvig Wal- 
borg. 

In 1914, Rev. and Mrs. J. L. Benson, Rev. and Mrs. 
Nels Benson, Rev. and Mrs. Gustav Carlberg, Rev. 
and Mrs. John Lindell, Rev. and Mrs. David Vickner, 
Miss Hannah Colberg, Sister Ingeborg Pearson, and 
Mrs. Spihra reached the field. The year 1915 com- 
pleted our first decade of work in China, and it was 
celebrated in a fitting manner both on the field and in 
the homeland. Rev. and Mrs. Anton Lundeen came to 
China in 1916, and in 1918, Miss Hilda Anderson, R. N. 
That year our missions were visited by the great 
Mohammedan missionary, Dr. S. M. Zwemer, of Cairo, 
Egypt. He gave valuable information concerning 
work among the Mohammedans, who are found in 
very large numbers in our Honan field. Many mosques 
were visited and priests spoken to. They did not seem 
to be indifferent to the gospel message. 

The year 1920 marks a great event in the history 
of the Augustana mission, for that year the first as- 
sembly of the Lutheran Church in China met in Ki 
Kung Shan. Already in 1915, in Shekow, Hupeh, on 
April 9-12, a meeting had been held, at which eight 
Lutheran missions were represented; and it was de- 
cided to draw up a constitution, which was adopted on 
August 22-29, 1920. There were representatives of 
nine different Lutheran bodies in China present at this 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD—CHINA 175 


meeting on the mountain. Those who signed the con- 
stitution at that meeting were: The Augustana Synod, 
the Finnish Missionary Society, the Lutheran United 
Mission, the Norwegian Missionary Society and the 
Church of Sweden Mission. The name of the Church 
in China is “Djung Hwa Sin I Giao Hwei.” Each 
constituent synod has its own constitution and by-laws 
for the regulation of its internal affairs. The General 
Assembly meets every three years and each synod 
elects its own delegates to the assembly. The number 
of delegates is in proportion to the number of the 
communicants of each synod. In no case, however, 
may the number from any synod exceed twenty. 
During 1920 our Mission Board sent out the follow- 
ing new missionaries: Rev. and Mrs. Roy Thelander 
and Miss Ruth Nystrom for the American school on 
Ki Kung Shan; Miss Anna Olson, a nurse, to Hsii- 
chow; Rev. Herman Larson and Miss Anna Johnson, 
a teacher. During 1919 congregations were organized 
at the five main stations in the field, modeled after 
our American congregations, with deacons and 
trustees. In March, 1920, these five congregations met 
in Jiichow and organized “The Central Honan Luth- 
eran Church.” This is a purely indigenous organiza- 
tion of the Christians on our field, the missionaries 
being advisory members. This year also marks the 
joining of our synod in the union work of the Shekow 
Theological Seminary. Dr. A. W. Edwins was called 
to be our representative on the faculty. This also was 
a trying year for the poor people on our field, who suf- 
fered during a fearful famine in Honan. “Missions 
were reported as being up against the hard wall of 
starvation with death staring them in the face.”’ Our 


176 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


synod contributed $40,464.14 during the year to help 
the starving sufferers. 

Already in 1915 the mission met its first personal 
loss in the death of Mrs. C. O. Forsberg, and in 1921 
two faithful workers died: Dr. O. W. Lindorf, who 
gave his life during an epidemic of typhus, and Mrs. 
Herman Larson, who died in Peking. Thus we have 
three graves on the soil of China—one in Hsiichow, 
one in Peking and one on Ki Kung Shan. 

In 1922 the synod sent its field secretary, Rev. Fred. 
W. Wyman, to China to inspect the field. During his 
stay there our station at Jiichow was looted by ban- 
dits and Rev. Anton Lundeen and Mr. C. O. Forsberg 
were carried away by the brigands. They were 
finally released after being forced to spend nearly two 
months with the robbers. At the annual conference 
held in Hsiichow on January 3-8, 19238, the Hassel- 
quist school was dedicated by the field secretary. This 
fine building now stands at this station as a testimony 
of the growing interest and love for our China mission 
in the home Church. 

In 1922 three new workers came out: Miss Ethel 
Palmquist, Ebba Pearson and Elizabeth Bergglund. 
The year 1928 marks another event of importance. 
- At the synod in Rockford, IIl., the missions of the 
synod were placed under the direction of one Board. 
The officers of the new Board now serving are: 
President, Dr. O. J. Johnson; Vice President, Dr. P. A. 
Mattson; Secretary, Dr. A. F. Almer; Treasurer, Mr. ~ 
N. P. Benson. 

In the spring of 1924 an event took place which 
may be regarded as a landmark in the history of the 
Hasselquist school. Then the first class was grad- 


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AUGUSTANA SYNOD—CHINA - 477 


uated from the four year middle school course. There 
were twenty-four members in the class, of whom 
twenty-two received middle school diplomas. The 
other two received provisional certificates, having 
failed to pass one or more of the final examinations. 

Of the middle school graduates all but four have 
entered the service of the mission as teachers. The 
enrollment in the middle school by classes is as fol- 
lows: freshman, 58; sophomore, 31; junior, 32; senior, 
21, making a total of 142. Of these about two-thirds 
are baptized Christians. 

The Emmy Ewald School for Girls at the same sta- 
tion graduated seven girls in the spring of 1924. At 
present the school has fifty pupils and five teachers. 
Both of these schools are beacon lights for Christ. 

The Augustana synod is doing union work together 
with other Lutheran bodies in the American school 
for missionaries’ children on Ki Kung Shan, which 
has a number of splendid school buildings and a fine 
house for the rector. Another union enterprise is the 
Union Theological Seminary at Shekow, Hupeh. Four 
students from our field have been graduated from this 
institution. In Hankow we are co-operating in the 
Home and Agency, recently built at a cost of $135,000. 
In higher educational work also we are co-operating 
in the Lutheran College at Taohualuen, Iyang, Honan, 
which was founded by the Church of Sweden and the 
Lutheran Church in China. 

In 1928 the missionary force was again augmented 
by the arrival of Rev. and Mrs. J. Benson, Jr., Miss 
Helen Hermanson and Miss Emelia Ring; and in 1924 
by Miss Lillian Peterson and Miss Florence Olson. 
Dr. and Mrs. Ernest Colberg and Rev. Erick Wahl- 


178 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


strom will sail for China this year, bringing the pres- 
ent missionary staff up to fifty-two. 

As to the present status of the Chinese Church on 
the field the following statistics may be mentioned. 
The number of communicants at all stations in 1924 
was 1,594; and registered inquirers numbered 1,925. 
The total contribution of the Chinese Church was 
$911.70. 

At the home base many forces are at work for the 
extension of Christ’s kingdom among the nations. In 
this connection we wish to mention the work done by 
the students of our colleges and academies. One Sat- 
urday afternoon, April 10, 1886, twelve young men 
met for a prayer meeting in the tower of “Old Main” 
at Augustana College, Rock Island, and organized 
“The Swedish Missionary Society.” This name was 
soon changed to “The Students’ Missionary Society,” 
which was incorporated in 1895 and recognized by 
the synod in 1897. This society has a wonderful his- 
tory and has been a great stimulus for foreign mis- 
sion work. It has a membership of 3,128 and an in- 
come, in 1924, of $8,707.70. Similar societies have 
been organized in Gustavus Adolphus College at St. 
Peter and in Bethany College, Wahoo, Neb. From 
the last named school alone sixteen graduates have 
taken up work in our foreign fields since the organiza- 
tion of the missionary society, up to the year 1925. 

One of the main factors in promoting missionary 
activity in the Augustana synod is the Women’s Mis- 
sionary Society, which was organized in the home of 
Dr. and Mrs. Carl Swenson at Lindsborg, Kan., on 
June 6, 1892. This meeting was brought about through 
the deep interest, energy and foresight of Mrs. Emmy 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD—CHINA 179 


Ewald. She was elected president at the organiza- 
tion meeting and has remained the efficient executive 
and prime mover in all the undertakings of the so- 
ciety to the present day. The society has spread over 
the entire United States and into Canada. It is made 
up of well organized branches, which include thirteen 
conference societies and one from each synodical mis- 
sion district. At the first meeting there were about 
fifty women present. Today the total membership is 
61,052. Of this number 20,921 are juniors. Besides 
contributing large sums every year to different enter- 
prises in the home field of the synod, the society has 
done great work in the foreign fields. In addition to 
supporting many of the women missionaries in China, 
Africa and India, the society paid for the erection of 
half of the Rajahmundry Hospital in India. The Mary 
von Gerber Chapel has been erected in connection with 
this hospital and a home for dependent Christian 
women is being built in Rajahmundry. This institu- 
tion is to be a memorial to the first Zenana worker in 
Rajahmundry, Miss Charlotte Swenson, who was a 
member of the Augustana synod. Support is also 
given to the Velore Medical School. 

In China the efforts of the society have been di- 
rected especially towards educational and medical 
work. <A well-equipped hospital will be erected at 
Hsiichow, Honan province. Dr. Hulda Thelander, a 
protege of the Minnesota conference, will soon be 
ready to leave for this field and join the medical staff 
already there. She will be the first Lutheran woman 
doctor in China. The Emmy Ewald Middle School 
for Girls in Hstichow, Honan, has been an object of 
the society’s interest and responsibility. This school 


180 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


will soon be erected, to match the Hasselquist Middle 
School for Boys at the same place. A woman’s com- 
pound will be built at each main station in China. In 
Africa the society supports three women missionaries. 
Of these Miss Bertha Anderson is our first Lutheran 
woman doctor in Africa. In Porto Rico a chapel was 
erected at Monacillo. At the close of the fiscal year 
the treasurer of the society reported an income for 
the year amounting to $128,849.81. This was used for 
sixty-seven different missionary enterprises at home 
and abroad. 


In October, 1926, the Augustana synod will cele- 
brate the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of 
its mission work in China. We can truly say: 
“Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.” As for the future 
we know that “the prospects are as bright as the prom- 
ises of God.” 


THE SUDAN, AFRICA 


One evening in 1907 a young student at Lutheran 
College, Wahoo, Neb., listened to an address on “Sudan 
for Christ,” by a pastor. From that evening the 
Sudan rested heavily on his heart, and all through his 
college years he contemplated going to the Dark Con- 
tinent. While at college and as a member of the Au- 
gustana College Missionary Society, this desire was 
strengthened. At the annual meeting of the society 
on January 27, 1917, it was voted to petition the synod 
to make a thorough investigation as to the possibility 
of taking up work in the Sudan. The Board appointed 
a committee to look into this matter. At the Board 
meeting on May Ist it was decided to recommend to 
the synod that work be taken up in the Sudan, Africa, 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD—AFRICA 181 


in accordance with the petition of the Augustana Col- 
lege Missionary Society, and that the Board extend a 
call to the Rev. Ralph Hult to be its first missionary. 
The synod at its meeting that same year voted its ac- 
ceptance of this proposal and: the call was extended to 
Rev. Hult with the understanding that the Augustana 
Missionary Society should continue its support of the 
mission. On account of the World War, it was impos- 
sible for the Board to send Rev. Hult to Africa at 
once, so he was sent to the Kennedy School of Mis- 
sions at Hartford, Conn., to study missions and fur- 
ther prepare himself for his work. 

The organization through which the synod intended 
to work and to find a field in the Sudan is known as 
the Sudan United Mission, which was organized on 
June 15, 1904, in the session room of the United Free 
St. George’s Church, Edinburgh, Scotland. 

Rev. Hult sailed for Africa on November 8, 1919, 
leaving New York on the freighter “Bereby,’’ which 
was making its maiden trip from America direct to 
Africa. He arrived at Dakar, on the Senegal coast, on 
Advent Sunday, and reached Lagos, Nigeria, during 
the last week in December, 1919. On his way out he 
had stopped at several of the west coast cities and 
visited missions at Freetown, Sierra Leone, Grand 
Bassa on the Ivory Coast; Sekoni and Acra on the 
Gold Coast; Lome in Togoland and Lagos in Nigeria. 

On New Year’s Day he left Lagos for the mouth of 
the Niger River. He took a river boat going due 
north for about 250 miles to Lokoja, a journey which 
took nearly a week. From Lokoja he went in a native 
canoe to Ibe, some 200 miles east of Lokoja. This 
journey took two weeks and a half. By invitation of 


182 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Dr. Henry Karl Kumm he was to stay in Ibe and 
Wukari to study the language and learn something of 
the practical work on the field. He stayed at Ibe until 
the last days of June, 1920, when he made a trip up 
the river to Numan, the outpost of the Danish Luth- 
eran mission. In Numan, Rev. Hult met two Nor- 
wegian Lutheran Brethren missionaries from Amer- 
ica, who had just come to the Sudan to find a field for 
their mission. After consulting with the Danish mis- 
sionaries and with others farther down the Binue 
River, it was suggested that the Augustana synod 
should occupy the large unoccupied areas to the east 
of the Danish mission. This would mean entering 
French territory. Before the war Cameroon was a 
German colony, but after the war it was divided be- 
tween the English and the French, the latter receiv- 
ing the larger part. In northern Nigeria there are no 
less than seven missions at work, while in northern 
Cameroon there is not a single mission. The draw- 
back to mission work on French territory is the fact 
that the missionaries must learn the French as well as 
the native language. The French are not favorable 
to Protestant missions. 

In September, 1920, Rev. Hult in the company of 
other missionaries left Numan for Garua in northern 
Cameroon. Here he spent three months in the study 
of the Fulani language, spoken in this part of Came- 
roon. In December, 1920, he started on his journey 
of investigation and from that time until about June 
1, 1921, he was moving about all the time. This jour- 
ney of nearly six months took him through the terri- 
tory of twenty different pagan tribes, and he came 
into contact with twenty-five or thirty other tribes. 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD—AFRICA 183 


The tribe that Rev. Hult picked out for the Augustana 
synod’s work was the Shara tribe. It numbers about 
200,000 and is surrounded on all sides by other small 
tribes which also could be reached. To the east, north 
and west of this large mass of pagans are Mohamme- 
dans. Every year they are encroaching more and more 
on this pagan territory. Rev. Hult wrote: ‘More than 
once was I told while on this journey: ‘We know the 
name of God, but we do not know how to pray to him.’ 
One pagan chief told me that for five years he had 
been looking down the road that leads to his town, to 
see if a teacher were coming. One of the most power- 
ful Moslem chiefs in this part of Africa offered me 
one thousand francs if I could procure for him a copy 
of the Bible in Arabic. A short time ago four Arabic 
Bibles were sent to as many Moslem chiefs, with 
whom I have had long conversations about the relig- 
ion of Isa (Jesus) and the ‘Linjila’ (the New Testa- 
ment) .” 

This, then, was the field in which Rev. Hult had 
hoped to work, but the Lord of the Harvest decreed 
otherwise. Sitting on the veranda of the home of a 
fellow missionary at Ibe one Sunday afternoon in 
March, 1922, a cablegram reached him from the home 
Board reading: ‘Go to Tanganyika.” As the Nor- 
wegian Lutheran Church had contemplated taking up 
work in Sudan, Rev. Hult at once cabled the Rev. 
Gunderson, then in Paris, the following message: “My 
Board cables go to Tanganyika. What about the 
Sharas? May the Lord lead the Norwegian brethren 
to the field we had to leave!’’ 

Rev. John Steimer also had been called by the Board 
and was in Sweden awaiting a message from the 


184 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Board to proceed to the Sudan, when a cablegram 
reached him instructing him to go to Tanganyika. 


TANGANYIKA 


The home Board in September, 1921, received an 
earnest request from the Lutheran Foreign Missions 
Conference of America to take over the German Leip- 
Sic mission in East Africa, in order to save it for the 
Lutheran Church. The reasons for heeding this call 
were, first, because the Leipsic mission in East Africa 
was in danger of being lost to the Lutheran Church on 
account of the expatriation of its German mission- 
aries. Secondly, because of the earnest appeal of the 
Lutheran Foreign Missions Conference of America to 
the Augustana synod, asking it to take the Leipsic 
field. Thirdly, because the missionary societies of 
England and Ireland and the British government fa- 
vored such a change. Fourthly, because the Augustana 
College Missionary Society also favored the change 
and all the conference presidents expressed themselves 
in favor of it. Finally, because Revs. Hult and Steimer 
were willing to be transferred to this field. 

Dr. G. A. Brandelle went to Europe to make ar- 
rangements with the Leipsic Society for the transfer- 
The agreement made between Dr. Brandelle and the 
Leipsic Society was that the Augustana synod should 
take over the entire field of the society, including the 
districts of Kilimanjaro, Meru Pare and plateau of 
Iramba. After the return of German missionaries to 
Africa a division of the field was to be arranged. It 
was also agreed that the Board of Trustees, appointed 
in accordance with Article 438 of the Versailles Peace 
Treaty, June 28, 1919, should hand over the property 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD—AFRICA 185 


of the Leipsic mission to the Augustana synod. Two 
missionaries had been allowed to remain in Africa 
because they were Esthonians, namely, Rev. Blumer 
and Rev. Eisenschmidt, who with Rev. Zeilinger, an 
American citizen, were to enter the service of the 
Augustana synod. Meanwhile the administration of 
the field was to be placed in the hands of a mission- 
ary conference. Besides the missionaries just men- 
tioned, Rev. Pfitzinger, a Frenchman, and Rev. 
Reusch, a Russian, were allowed to stay in Africa by 
the British government, and their services also were 
retained by the Augustana synod. 

On October 18, 1923, the Board of Trustees for 
Tanganyika territory met at 2 Eaton Gate, London. 
Many matters of importance concerning this territory 
were considered. Among others the following resolu- 
tions were adopted: “That a lease or license in the 
terms of the conditions and provisions set forth in 
minute 31 hereof, be granted to the Evangelical Luth- 
eran Augustana Synod of North America, of the prop- 
erties at the following stations, being the properties 
at the stations, with one exception after-mentioned, 
contained in the list submitted by the said synod, viz.: 
Arusha, Nkoaranga, Gonja, Wudee, Mbaga, Schira, 
Madschame, Moshi and New Moshi, Schigatini, 
Usangi, Mamba, Marangu, Masama.” As to Rumma, 
the only station of the Leipsic mission on the Iramba 
plateau, it was left to the decision of the International 
Missionary Council to which mission it should be as- 
signed. 

The British government left the administration of 
the mission field to the National Lutheran Council and 
that body in turn to the Augustana synod. Rev. Hult 


186 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


was appointed by the Board as superintendent of the 
field, until the division of the field should be decided. 
In 1924 the British government declared itself in 
favor of permitting the German missionaries to re- 
turn to their former field. This made it necessary to 
take up at once the question of the division of the 
field. Again the president of the synod went to Eng- 
land to confer with the British government and the 
representatives of the Leipsic Society. Dr. Brandelle 
met them on September 6, 1924, and it was agreed: 
“That a tentative division of the field be made as fol- 
lows: the stations Moshi, Mamba, Marangu, Mwika, 
Schgatini, Usangi, Wudee, Mbaga and Gonja, to- 
gether with New Moshi and the contiguous plains, are 
to be tentatively allotted to the Board of Foreign Mis- 
sions of the Augustana synod, to have and to hold in 
undisputed possession and perpetuity, in so far as the 
Leipsic Mission Society is concerned. The stations 
Madschame, Masama, Schire, Nkoaranga and Arusha 
are to be allotted to the Leipsic Society to have and to 
hold in undisputed possession and perpetuity, in so 
far as the Board of Foreign Missions of the Augustana 
synod is concerned.” 

Iramba remained unassigned for the present. ‘“‘It 
is understood that the Board of Foreign Missions of 
the Augustana Synod, after having conferred with the 
missionaries on the field as to this matter, if it chooses, 
be entitled to relinquish to the Leipsic Society the sta- 
tions allotted to it as above, and to take instead as its 
future field the district of Iramba. If, on the other 
hand, the Board of Foreign Missions of the Augustana 
synod elects to retain as its field the stations herewith 
tentatively allotted to it, the Iramba field shall be 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD—AFRICA 187 


allotted to the Leipsic Missionary Society in per- 
petuity, as far as the Board of Foreign Missions of 
the Augustana synod is concerned. 


“The Board of Foreign Missions of the Augustana 
Synod shall give to the Leipsic Missionary Society full 
possession of the station allotted to it as soon as the 
Board of Foreign Missions of the Augustana synod 
can make necessary adjustments. At all events not 
later than on or before the Ist day of July, 1926.” 

Tanganyika territory, formerly called German East 
Africa, was mandated to the British government in 
1919. This territory has a area of 370,000 miles and 
a population of about 4,000,000. It is bounded on 
the northeast by Kenya colony, on the northwest by 
Uganda, on the east by the Indian Ocean, on the south- 
east by northern Rhodesia. It is larger than all the 
Atlantic coast states from New York to Florida. The 
northern area, in which the field of the former Leipsic 
mission is located, has a native population of 1,385,- 
700, an area of 77,629 square miles, and a density of 
eighteen persons to the square mile. Most of the 
area has an altitude from 1,600 to 4,000 feet. The 
districts of Moshi and Arusha are more than 4,000 
feet in altitude and contain the extinct volcano Kili- 
manjaro, 19,720 feet high—the highest mountain in 
Africa. There is much fertile land and the climate 
is generally healthy. The country is very beautiful 
with its high mountains, forests, rivers and valleys. 
The fauna is very rich and all kinds of wild animals 
abound on the plains and on the mountains. There 
are two seasons, the wet and the dry, divided into four 
periods. The two rain periods occur in April-May and 


188 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


July-August; the two hot seasons in February-March 
and in October. 

The people of this field belong to the Bantu and 
the Massia tribes. The Bantus inhabit the most of 
the field. The Massia are found in the western part 
of the Aruba field. The Wadschaggas live on the 
slopes of Kilimanjaro. The language is Swahali, which 
is the lingua franca of Tanganyika territory. ‘“Offi- 
cers of the government and missions interested in the 
education of interior tribes are seriously considering 
the relative importance of the native language, Swa- 
hali, and English, as the language of instruction in 
the schools.”” The numerous dialects on the field are 
various forms of the Bantu language. All over the 
field the Swahali is used, with the local dialects. The 
religion of the natives is animistic and Mohammedan- 
ism is largely limited to the coast towns. The prin- 
ciple occupation of the people is the cultivation of the 
soil and cattle raising. 

According to the latest statistics, in the entire for- 
mer Leipsic field in 1922 there were 53 outstations; 
77 meeting places or schoolrooms; native Christian 
teachers numbered 115; average attendance at Sunday 
services, 6,297; communicant Church members, 3,309; 
total Church membership, 6,538; schools, 84; total 
number of pupils, 4,918. The statistics for the stations 
allotted to the Augustana synod were in 1923: Native 
elders, 100; Church elders, 38; communicants, 2,772; 
total number of Church members, 4,997; baptized 
Christians, 149; children of Christian parents, 288; 
catechumens, 372; enrollment in mission schools, 
6,212. 


AUGUSTANA SYNOD—AFRICA 189 


The present missionary force on the field from the 
Augustana synod includes the following: Rev. and 
Mrs. Ralph Hult, Rev. and Mrs. John N. Steimer, Rev. 
and Mrs. Herbert 8S. Magney, Rev. N. Ludwig Mel- 
lander, Miss Selma Swanson, Rev. and Mrs. George 
Anderson, Dr. Bertha Anderson and Miss Alvida 
Bonander. 

The division of the field as described above did not 
prove entirely satisfactory to either mission. In No- 
vember, 1925, the Leipsic Society asked for a revision 
of the London Agreement of September 6, 1924, with 
a view of having returned to it the stations of Moshi, 
Mamba, Mvika and Maranga. The Augustana mis- 
sionaries also favored change of field and so the Au- 
gustana Foreign Mission Board in 1926 decided to 
apply to the Tanganyika Trust for the Iramba field, 
about 200 miles west of the present field. If that re- 
quest is granted, the Kilimanjaro and Pare fields will 
be returned to the Leipsic Society. The Augustana 
missionaries have been directed to proceed to the new 
field as soon as negotiations of the Board with the 
Tanganyika Trust have been completed. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


JOINT SYNOD OF OHIO 
EDWARD PFEIFFER 


INDIA 


“Time and change are busy ever, 
Man decays and ages move; 
But His mercy waneth never; 
God is wisdom, God is love.” 


Two generations have come and gone since the mis- 
sion in India, now operated by the Joint Synod of 
Ohio, was begun. Let us note a fact or two that will 
forcibly remind us of the stupendous changes which 
have taken place in this short period of time. Several 
of the Hermannsburg missionary pioneers, among 
them Rev. J. Woerrlein, sailed from Hamburg in the 
famous mission ship “Candace” on September 7, 1867, 
and after a stop of sixteen days in Natal, South Africa, 
they reached Madras on February 21 of the next year. 
The voyage, with plentiful discomforts and hardships, 
lasted fully five months. Today the voyage from New 
York to India may be made with comfort in less than 
five weeks. This is but one of many incidents that 
mark the contrast between then and now in the ma- 
terial things that go with life and work. When we 
consider the havoc wrought by the World War, the 
forcible removal of missionaries from the fields in 

190 


JOINT SYNOD OF OHIO—INDIA 191 


which they had labored for many years, the mission 
congregations left orphaned and destitute of spiritual 
leaders, the management of the -work turned over to 
others, the moral and spiritual suffering and sorrow 
thus entailed—we get a pathetic view of some of the 
disastrous changes that have been brought about in 
a brief decade of time. 

Yet the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth, and His 
mercy waneth never. Therein lies the Christian’s 
comfort and assurance of the ultimate victory of truth 
and righteousness. We miss the most valuable lesson 
of the history of missions if we fail to note God’s 
hand in the opening of doors and the preparation of 
workers, in the removal of obstacles and the strength- 
ening of faith and courage, in overruling the conse- 
quences of sin and folly and marshaling the forces 
needful for the advancement of His kingdom and 
glory. 

The providential factor is one of the outstanding 
features of the history of this mission in India. The 
Lord’s hand and guidance are in evidence in the se- 
lection of the field and the founding of the mission, 
during its development and growth, in the events 
which led to the transfer by purchase of two stations 
to the Joint Synod in Ohio in 1912, and in the final 
scenes during the World War that compelled us, 
poorly prepared though we were, to take over the 
work of the entire field of ten main stations. All the 
way through there was no arbitrary choosing, no hap- 
hazard movement, but the way is marked by clearly 
defined indications of the Lord’s will. 

In 1865, twelve years after the first Hermannsburg 
missionaries and colonists set sail for Africa, steps 


192 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


were taken to begin work in India. It was one of the 
last momentous steps taken by the intrepid founder 
of the Hermannsburg Mission, Pastor Louis Harms. 
In the obedience of faith and in his readiness to fol- 
low what he regarded as the Lord’s providential lead- 
ing he sent Rev. August Mylius to India. Provi- 
dentially Mylius was led, in 1866, to begin work in a 
wholly unoccupied territory south of Rajahmundry 
and Guntur. Here, by dint of characteristic devotion, 
industry and personal self-sacrifice, the stations were 
established, one after the other, until they numbered 
ten. The rigid economy and self-denial practiced by 
the missionaries was, under the new and trying con- 
ditions, a costly blunder and led to many premature 
deaths in the ranks of the workers, until, in 1891, pro- 
vision was made for regular furloughs, improvement 
of the missionaries’ homes, and recuperation during 
the hottest season on the Palni Hills, the rest station 
at Kodaikanal. 

The providential factor is evident, too, in the en- 
trance of the Joint Synod to share a small portion of 
the Hermannsburg mission field in India and to be in 
legal possession of this portion, when the great dis- 
aster befell the mission. So far from being forward 
and arbitrary in the selection of a field, we seem to 
have been deliberate and cautious in the extreme. 
Finally, after fifteen years of investigation and cor- 
respondence, after discussing the subject and reports 
of committees at eight biennial conventions of the 
Joint Synod, after two representatives of Hermanns- 
burg had at different times in person presented over- 
tures to the synod, a revised offer regarding the trans- 
fer of two stations, Kodur and Puttur, was accepted 











INDIAN ' PASTORS. 
Joint Synod of Ohio Mission. 














CHURCH AT PUTTUR, INDIA. 


Joint Synod of Ohio Mission. 


JOINT SYNOD OF OHIO—INDIA 193 


“with practical unanimity.” That was in 1912. A 
joint committee of appraisers was appointed, and the 
value of all the property belonging to the two stations 
was agreed upon and duly paid. Missionaries J. N. 
Wittmann and J. Maneke were to remain at the two 
stations in our service until we might be able to send 
over and install missionaries from our own ranks. 
Thus we expected to begin on a very small scale and 
have our young missionaries trained in close proximity 
to experienced missionaries of our own faith. At the 
request of the missionaries on the field our Board, at 
the beginning of 1913, took independent charge of the 
work in the two districts we had purchased. 

Then followed seven years of trial and bitter dis- 
appointment. We did not at that time contemplate 
sending candidates directly from the seminary. Our 
first attempts to secure young pastors with some ex- 
perience proved unsuccessful. Time wore on, and it 
was not until December, 1915, that our first mis- 
sionaries, Rev. and Mrs. J. P. Pflueger and Rev. Wil- 
liam F. Schmidt, sailed from Seattle, because the di- 
rect route was made impossible by the war. They 
reached Colombo in safety, but the authorities refused 
to admit them into India, and they returned home the 
next spring. By that time all the German mission- 
aries and their families had been compelled to leave 
India. In two groups the Hermannsburg mission- 
aries, including three deaconesses who had been car- 
rying on a blessed work among the women, arrived 
in Germany in January and in May, 19165. 

Four years elapsed before permission could be se- 
cured for missionaries of our own to enter India and 
take up the work. Meanwhile Rev. C. Scriba, a Brit- 


194 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


ish subject, having been born in India, was the only 
European missionary remaining on the field. By gov- 
ernment order even his movements were restricted. 
He was allowed to reside at Kodur, but was not per- 
mitted to have charge of the management of the work 
at large. In this emergency the Rajahmundry and the 
Guntur missions came to the rescue by generously 
granting us the service of men to supervise the work. 
Missionaries Karl L. Wolters, Victor McCauley and 
S. C. Burger served in turn until the arrival of our 
missionaries in 1920. 

In this way the work of the Hermannsburg mis- 
sion was preserved during a most critical period. The 
providential factor is clearly recognized by the Her- 
mannsburg brethren. At the request of their mis- 
sionaries and of the director of the mission, Doctor 
Haccius, and with the consent and approval of the 
India government, the Joint Synod of Ohio, in addi- 
tion to the two stations which we had purchased, took 
over the work of the remaining eight stations, thus 
becoming responsible for the work in the entire field. 

The first group of four missionaries from our own 
ranks, Rev. and Mrs. Elmer 8. Nicholson, Miss Laura 
EK. Nicholson, R. N., and Rev. Andrew W. Wilch, 
sailed from Vancouver, B. C., in March, 1920, arriv- 
ing in India on May 8. In August of that year two 
additional missionaries, Rev. and Mrs. Carl W. Ober- 
dorfer, sailed from Vancouver. Not until the spring 
of the following year were new recruits able to sail 
from New York. Under the new and perplexing con- 
ditions our Board felt constrained to send over a spe- 
cial commissioner to assist our young missionaries in 
effecting an organization in consonance with our 





JOINT SYNOD OF OHIO FIELD IN THE MADRAS PRESIDENCY, INDIA, IN- 
CLUDING THE FORMER HERMANNSBURG MISSION FIELD, WHOSE 
WORK HAS BEEN TAKEN OVER. 


The ten main stations are: Kodur, Puttur, Tirupati (where the high school 
is located), Rapur, Venkatagiri, Kalahasti, Sulurpeta, Gudur, Vacadu, Nayu- 
dupeta. The place marked ‘“‘b’”’ is Renigunta, the site of the projected hos- 
pital. The field is intersected by three railway lines, making all the stations 
easily accessible. 


American policies. Rev. C. V. Sheatsley was on the 

India field from July 15 to December 1, 1920, and ren- 

dered effective aid in the formation of the India Con- 

ference of the Joint Synod, composed of the mission- 

aries on the field, in the adoption of a constitution and 
195 


196 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


by-laws together with rules for missionaries, and in 
putting things in general on a workable basis. His 
official report is published in a book entitled, “Our 
Mission Field in India.”’ 

At the close of 1924 our foreign staff numbered 
twenty-four. In addition to those already mentioned, 
they are: Rev. Arthur B. Nicholson, Rev. and Mrs. 
Floyd B. Kantzer, Rev. and Mrs. Carl D. Schwan, Rev. 
and Mrs. Carl M. Doermann, Mr. William C. Krengel, 
Rev. and Mrs. George J. Schaefer, Mr. Milton H. 
Schramm, Rev. and Mrs. Clyde B. Hildebrand, Miss 
Pernilla Hagen, R. N., Miss Martha Buttikofer and 
Miss Ruth Meyer. It is worthy of note that all but 
two of the twenty-four are recruits from our own 
ranks, and that twenty-one were sent out and arrived 
on the field in the short space of three and a half 
years. The entire force, including Rev. and Mrs. 
Scriba, comprised ten ordained men, two unordained 
men, eight wives and four single women. The total 
native staff, including three ordained men, numbered 
312. In order to appreciate the work which has been 
accomplished by God’s grace, the reader is invited to 
take a glance at the losses that were sustained through 
the war. 

During the absence of missionaries to exercise effi- 
cient oversight and direction great losses were sus- 
tained both in, property and membership. As build- 
ings were almost entirely neglected, many of them fell 
into disrepair and some into ruin. The first thing 
called for in the period of reconstruction was a large 
sum for repairs and new buildings. But far more 
serious than this were the losses sustained in the 
stability, the morals and the membership of the 


JOINT SYNOD OF OHIO—INDIA 197 


churches. A few figures will show the loss at a glance. 
The report for the year 1917 alone recorded a loss of 
314 souls from the membership roll. In five years, 
from 1918 to 1918, the mission suffered the loss of 
848 souls. The membership was reduced from 3,116 
in 19138 (with the exception of the unusual and tem- 
porary gains in the famine year 1905, the highest 
number reached hitherto) to 2,268 in 1918. 

On the dark background of these tremendous losses 
the gains of the last four years loom up as striking 
evidences of divine favor and blessing. It appears as 
though, after a long season of faithful labor, seed- 
sowing, trial and patient waiting on the part of the 
self-sacrificing Hermannsburg missionaries, the time 
of harvest has come. Other men labored, and we have 
entered into their labors. May the promise of the 
Lord of the Harvest be realized, “that both he that 
soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.” 

The gains in membership have been as follows: 
Added by baptism in 1921, 144 (39 of them adult con- 
verts) ; in 1922, 264 (167 converts) ; in 1923, 389 (268 
converts) ; in 1924, 393 (248 converts). The total 
membership has grown to 3,844 (of which 2,032 are 
adults), a net gain of 228 over 1913, in spite of the 
great losses during the war. A native worker was 
ordained in 1923, giving the mission three Indian pas- 
tors. The number of Indian workers has increased 
from 218 in 1913 to 261 in 1924; and adding 51 teach- 
ers employed in higher schools brings the native staff 
up to 312. The total number of teachers in elemen- 
tary and higher schools was 189, and the number of 
pupils in ali grades, 3,067. One of the most remark- 
able increases is in the number of persons under in- 


198 OUR CHURCH, ABROAD 


struction for baptism at the close of the year. Whereas 
in 1913 it was 50, the highest number reported up to 
that time, the number reported in 1924 was 284. The 
records indicate, too, a growing sense of obligation 
and responsibility on the part of the native Christians. 
While in 1913 the contributions of the native churches 
totaled Rs. 900, they aggregated Rs. 1,756 in 1924. 

The last four years, which may be properly called 
the period of reconstruction, are marked by the re- 
opening of schools which had been closed during the 
war—the theological and catchetical seminary, the in- 
dustrial school, and the lace-making school. A new 
and enlarged dispensary has been erected at Kodur. 
In addition to extensive repairs, new buildings have 
been erected, among them a number of “standard”’ 
school houses, substantial buildings of brick, concrete 
and tile. The annual budget has increased in four 
years from $20,000 to $65,000. 

The most ambitious project contemplated in con- 
nection with our India mission is one that has been 
set in motion by the good women of the Joint Synod. 
They have in view the erection, equipment and main- 
tenance of a hospital that shall be adequate to the 
needs of the field and community. Renigunta, an out- 
station of Puttur, a railway junction, has been chosen 
as the site. Preliminary plans have been approved, 
and the work is well under way. The Women’s Mis- 
sionary Conference has already gathered a fund of 
$60,000, and the effort is to continue until the sum of 
$75,000 has been reached. Rev. F. B. Kantzer, who 
enjoyed a year’s practical training at Livingstone Col- 
lege, London, and who had rendered medical service 
at Kodur and at the leper asylum there for nearly 


JOINT SYNOD OF OHIO—INDIA 199 


two years, is at present pursuing a complete course of 
medical and surgical training at Rush Medical Col- 
lege in Chicago, with a view to his taking charge of 
the projected hospital. 

Miss Hagen has had charge of the medical work 
since Rev. Kantzer returned home. Last year 2,500 
cases were treated notwithstanding the inadequate 
accommodations. In the leper asylum, located about 
a mile from the station, there were forty-three 
inmates. 

The special support of pupils and Indian workers by 
patrons in our congregations, individuals, Sunday 
schools, societies and Luther Leagues has been grow- 
ing in favor and volume. In four boarding schools 
or hostels 283 pupils were cared for last year. Some 
forty of the elementary teachers were supported by 
patrons. A beginning has been made toward the sup- 
port of a missionary pastor on the foreign field. Cap- 
ital University Missionary Society has for two years 
contributed the salary of one of our missionaries, a 
teacher in the high school at Tirupati. It is hoped 
that some of our well-to-do congregations may fol- 
low this example and assume the support of mission- 
aries. All such special support is, of course, given 
in addition to the regular apportionment. 

The complex situation brought about by the war has 
not as yet been cleared up. According to one of the 
government orders, “The Hermannsburg mission has 
ceased to exist in India.” The India government au- 
thorized the Joint Synod of Ohio to take over the work 
that had been carried on by the society, but has not 
given a definite decision with respect to the property. 
In official circles the sentiment seems to incline to this 


200 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


effect, that, as the property was acquired for the wel- 
fare and advancement of the Indian people, it should 
be held in trust for the Indian Church. We have 
labored faithfully for the conservation and expansion 
of the work; and as we have followed the Lord’s prov- 
idential leading in the past, we shall strive in the fu- 
ture also to be obedient to His will. 

In the ranks of our missionaries some changes have 
occurred since the end of 1924. On account of the 
serious illness of his wife, Rev. Hildebrand felt con- 
strained to return home with her, and his resignation 
has been regretfully accepted by the Board. Mr. Wm. 
Krengel is also returning, and it is uncertain as to his 
continuance in the industrial work of the mission. Rev. 
Arthur B. Nicholson and Miss Martha Buttikofer were 
united in marriage at Kodaikanal, India, June 11, 
1925. 

Three new recruits have been secured and are 
getting in readiness to go to the field. Miss Marie L. 
Haueisen, B.S., a graduate of Ohio State University, 
with four years’ experience in teaching, sailed from 
New York, September 5. She will have charge of the 
girls’ school at Gudur. Another ordained missionary 
will be added to our staff in the person of Rev. Henry 
Mayer, a graduate of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, 
Minn. He sailed with his wife on November 25, 1925. 
Miss Louetta Koehn, R. N., sailed March 25, 1926, 
thus restoring the numerical strength of our mission- 
ary staff. 


CHAPTER IX. 


SYNOD OF IOWA 
F, BRAUN 


NEW GUINEA 


New Guinea, the largest island in the South Sea, 
with an area of 305,900 square miles, a length of 
about 1500, and a breadth which varies between 200 
and 400 miles, is one of the newer mission fields of 
the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Although discovered 
early in the sixteenth century by the Portuguese and 
separated from Australia by Torres Strait, which is 
only eighty miles wide, New Guinea remained an un- 
known land until a few decades ago. Not even the great 
European powers cared much about this vast, pic- 
turesque island with its dense forests, impenetrable 
swamps, steep slopes and lofty mountains, rocked and 
rent by frequent earthquakes. The division of the 
island between Great Britain, Germany and Holland 
was arranged in 1885. It remained, however, for 
Christian missions to open the roads to civilization, 
bring peace to the warlike Papuan tribes and prove 
again that the gospel of Christ is the power of God 
unto salvation to everyone who believes it. Where 
cannibalism prevailed, where fear and sorcery kept 
souls in bondage, a vigorous, active Church is grow- 
ing up. Whole tribes have renounced their heathen 

201 


202 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


traditions. New Guinea offers a rare opportunity to 
win a nation for Christ. The leaven of the gospel has 
been at work, numerous native helpers, filled with holy 
zeal, are carrying the good tidings to their benighted 
countrymen in the hinterland; a great spiritual 
awakening foreshadows victory for the cross, as the 
glorious reward of the faithful and patient service ren- 
dered by God’s co-laborers in this far off island. 

The first Christian missionaries in New Guinea 
were Lutherans. The Dutchman O. H. Heldring, a 
friend of the renowned Pastor J. Gossner, organized 
a society for the evangelization of the South Sea 
islands. Gossner provided for this society the mis- 
sionaries Otto and Geissler, who founded stations at 
Doreh Bay in 1885, which later were taken over by 
the Utrecht Society. 

The London Missionary Society began its work in 
the British part of New Guinea in 1871. Under the 
leadership of men like Murray, Chalmers, Abel and 
through the devoted work of Polynesian teachers, 
flourishing congregations were established. The An- 
glicans and Wesleyans began their work in 1891. 

The Lutheran mission, by God’s grace, has become 
the most important factor in Christianizing the Pap- 
uans. When the northern part of the territory, which 
lies east of the 141st meridian, came under German 
dominion, the mission circles in Germany deemed it 
their duty to bring the Bible to the new colony. The 
Neuendettelsau (Bavarian) Society, founded by Pas- 
tor Wilhelm Loehe to supply German settlers in North 
America and Australia with ministers, which had 
worked among the Papuans of Australia since 1878, 
in co-operation with the Immanuel Synod of Australia, 


SYNOD OF IOWA—NEW GUINEA 203 


at once resolved to extend its work to the evangeliza- 
tion of the New Guinea Papuans. The Rhenish (Bar- 
men) mission society, which had gathered wide 
experience in its adjacent mission fields in the Neth- 
erlands’ Indies, secured a reservation for a mission 
field in New Guinea through the New Guinea Trading 
Company and the German government. The German 
colonial secretary allotted to each society a definite 
district, so as to eliminate friction and rivalry. The 
Neuendettelsau Society secured the Finschhafen terri- 
tory, the Rhenish Society got Astrolabe Bay. The 
Roman Catholics occupied the country around Alex- 
ishafen. 


JOHANNES FLIERL 


The Lutheran mission in New Guinea is inseparably 
connected with the name of Johannes Flierl. Since 
the days of his childhood, when interest in foreign 
mission work was kindled in him by a public school 
teacher in his native village, he had wished and prayed 
that he might serve the Lord as a missionary. Many 
obstacles blocked the road to this desired goal. The 
Neuendettelsau Society, through which Flierl received 
his theological training, had no mission field at that 
time. Whether the Iowa synod would resume its mis- 
sion among the American Indians, as the ardent can- 
didate hoped, was very doubtful. Then the Australian 
Immanuel Synod, to which the Hermannsburg Dieri 
mission on Cooper’s Creek and Finke River (estab- 
lished 1867) was ceded, appealed to Neuendettelsau 
for help. Flierl offered his service, was accepted and 
entered the field of his first activity in October, 1878. 
Bethesda, on Lake Kilalpania, is the fruit of his faith- 


204 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


ful missionary work. This venerable “Senior,” as he 
was officially called, writes in his memoirs: “When I 
sailed to Australia, I said to my partner, perhaps it 
will suffice for us to work about ten years in Austra- 
lia. I should prefer to go to a new field like New 
Guinea, where the natives are not so oppressed by the 
Europeans.” This thought lay buried in his subcon- 
scious mind until the news of the division of New 
Guinea between the colonial powers revived it and 
then it filled his soul with irresistible force. Flierl 
prepared a memorandum, asking his Australian Board 
as well as the Neuendettelsau Society to open a station 
in New Guinea. The Immanuel synod, a small body, 
could not undertake the new enterprise. Neuendet- 
telsau answered in the affirmative and ordered Flierl 
to make arrangements for the journey. After lengthy 
negotiations with the New Guinea Trading Company, 
passport and permit were granted. When he landed 
at Finschhafen in July, 1886, the lonely missionary re- 
ceived a friendly welcome from the officials, who as- 
sisted him in every way. The steps taken by our pio- 
neer missionary were of far-reaching consequences. 
The Neuendettelsau Society, hitherto a society for 
Home and Inner Mission work, thus became an active 
agent in Foreign Mission work, and by opening the 
door to mission work in New Guinea, it enabled the 
Rhenish Society, which also had asked for admittance, 
to send out its first missionaries in 1887. 

New Guinea was virgin mission soil. Untouched by 
civilization, never in contact with the outer world, 
Papuan heathenism had exerted its corrupting in- 
fluence undisturbed and unhindered. Perhaps the hy- 
pothesis of Dr. Fuhrmann, that sun-cult was the orig- 


SYNOD OF IOWA—NEW GUINEA 205 


inal form of religion in New Guinea, cannot be proven. 
He also assumes a retrogression from a higher stan- 
dard of culture to the rude conditions of the stone age. 
The fact is, that their traditions about the creator 
and the creation have had practically no influence upon 
the religious life of the Papuans; and the characters 
of the natural law, written in every human heart, had 
been considerably blurred. Animism in its grossest 
forms gained a firm stronghold in New Guinea. The 
Papuan worships his ancestors. Maja, the unwritten 
code of customs and demeanor, governs all activities. 
Kinship and clan control public life. The communistic 
system, practised for centuries, prevents development 
and progress. The confusion of language, prevailing 
in New Guinea, renders the evangelization of the 
island more difficult. 

Flierl and his friend Tremel, who arrived in Sep- 
tember, 1886, decided to build the first mission sta- 
tion at Simbang, a little hamlet situated on Langemak 
Bay. During the following years the missionaries 
Bamler, Pfalzer, Vetter and Hoh arrived. The Tami 
islanders, seafarers and traders belonging to the 
Melanesian race (the darker colored Papuans dwell in 
the mountainous regions and the inland), invited the 
strangers to settle among them. So Bamler and 
Tremel pitched their tents in a palm grove at Wonam 
in November, 1889. This development encouraged the 
society so much that the missionary staff was rein- 
forced by the missionaries Ruppert, Decker, Zwanzger 
and Held. Sattelberg, founded 1892 and afterwards a 
dominant factor in the history of the Papuan mission, 
was the third station opened in Northeastern New 
Guinea. Despite the many difficulties of the field and 


206 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


the vexing problems of the work, the missionaries’ 
desire to implant the message of grace and truth in 
the hearts and homes of this warlike, brutish people, 
accepted no defeat. The missionaries never expected 
to win an easy victory. They simply tried to win 
souls for Christ by the gospel. But faith and patience 
had to endure a severe test. Malaria and other cli- 
matic diseases seriously interfered with the work. 
Ruppert died a few weeks after his arrival. Held was 
called to the heavenly home after having served about 
a year. Sickness compelled Miss Goetz, a woman mis- 
sionary, to leave for a healthier climate. It was a 
difficult task to learn the language, or rather the dia- 
lects of the numerous tribes. Reading and writing 
were unknown arts to the New Guinea savages. Every 
single word had to be picked up, its meaning verified 
and indexed by painstaking comparisons. The great- 
est obstacle, however, was the distrust of the natives. 
They questioned the honesty of the missionaries; they 
feared the influence of the white man; they instinc- 
tively felt that their heathen beliefs and practices 
would die out, if the spread of the ““Miti” (the gospel) 
succeeded. The clan system made the missionaries’ 
approach to individuals difficult. Children expected to 
be recompensed for their school attendance. Chiefs 
and sorcerers raised a warning voice against the 
Christian innovations. The first fruits of the mis- 
sionaries’ efforts appeared in the mission schools. The 
young people opened their hearts to the Word of life; 
the children turned the hearts of their fathers to the 
missionaries. The first baptism occurred in 1899, at 
Simbang, where two Kai boys confessed their faith 
in Jesus Christ, the Redeemer. 


SYNOD OF IOWA—NEW GUINEA 207 


The Rhenish mission labored and suffered under 
similar conditions and difficulties. Its pioneer mis- 
sionaries, Eich and Thomas, began their preliminary 
work in May, 1887. Both were experienced men, hav- 
ing spent sixteen years in active service, the one in 
Nias, the other among the African Hereros. Their 
original plan to start a station at Hatzfeldhafen could 
not be accomplished. The natives showed hostility to- 
ward the white men. Queer as it may sound, sickness 
saved the lives of the missionaries. The Papuans 
plotted to murder the strangers, but frequent attacks 
of malaria forced Eich and Thomas to withdraw, and 
Thomas left New Guinea on account of ill health. Eich 
moved to Bogadjim on the Bay of Astrolabe, where, 
though harassed by fever and lack of help, he founded 
the first station. In January, 1888, Scheidt and Berg- 
mann joined them. They landed during a heavy storm. 
Their boat was capsized and some valiant Papuans 
rescued the drowning men. This incident proved that 
the friendly, patient missionary had won the confi- 
dence of the people. They then assisted him in the con- 
struction of the necessary mission buildings. Like 
Neuendettelsau, the Rhenish Board undertook an ex- 
tension of its work and sent out missionaries Kunze 
and Wackernagel, who were expected in January, 
1889. When the steamer had anchored, the brethren 
hastened to greet the newcomers; but a sad message 
awaited them. Whilst stopping at Finschhafen, Wack- 
ernagel had taken a bath in Simbang River and had 
been drowned. Mrs. Eich, who had joined her hus- 
band, died in the same year. Bergmann and Kunze 
were assigned to work at Siar. After a school had 


208 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


been established, parents and children gradually be- 
came interested in the Bible. Shortly before Christ- 
mas, 1889, three young recruits, Klaus, Boesch and 
Arff, reached the field. Dr. Frobenius, a medical mis- 
sionary, also arrived. An older and a younger mis- 
sionary were stationed on Dampier Island. But be- 
fore this station was completed, Klaus died and Eich 
had to leave New Guinea forever. Boesch and Scheidt 
were sent to Franklin Bay, where Malala cannibals 
slew them. Broken-hearted Mrs. Boesch, who never 
recovered from this blow, died and was buried at Siar. 
The chronicle of the following year is marked by two 
crosses. Mrs. Kunze departed this life in April; Mis- 
- sionary Pillkuhn, after a half year’s work, in Novem- 
ber. Their graves are on Dampier Island. The next 
victim of the deadly climate was Arff. Barkemeyer 
met with an accident which resulted in his untimely 
death. Bergmann, who loved the Papuans like a 
father his dear children, died in 1904 in Australia, 
where he had sought medical help. Sickness obliged 
Kunze, Dr. Frobenius and the lay-brother Holzapfel 
to quit the mission service. Debility caused the death 
of Mrs. Hanke. Five weeks after his arrival Nebe 
succumbed to the first attack of fever. Koolen’s shat- 
tered health forced his speedy return to Germany. 
Many hopes and expectations were buried with these 
martyrs. Could their knowledge of the native lan- 
guage and customs, acquired by diligent labor, be re- 
placed? In 1904, Ostermann was called to his home 
above; but before his departure the heavenly Master 
had granted him the joy of seeing the glorious long- 
prayed-for day of the first baptism in the Madang 
district; and even in the hours of his last agony he 


‘VUNIOD MUN NI TddSOD FHL 





IHOVadd 








THE NEW CHURCH AT KAERABANI, SANTALISTAN, INDIA, CON- 
SECRATED APRIL 26, 1925. 





LUTHERAN CHURCH, EBENEZER STATION, SANTALISTAN, INDIA. 


SYNOD OF IOWA—NEW GUINEA 209 


exclaimed, “We must tell the Papuans how Jesus 
loves them.” Mrs. Diehl succumbed to blackwater 
fever in 1905, concluding the long, sad list. Truly the 
graves of our missionaries in New Guinea are ever- 
lasting memorials of Christian faith, self-denial and 
sacrifice to the last full measure of devotion. 

To complete the necrology the names of our Lord’s 
other servants, who sacrificed their lives in the Finsch- 
hafen mission should be added: Rev. Ruppert, Rev. 
and Mrs. Vetter, Rev. Held, Rev. Tremel, Mrs. 
Hansche, Mrs. Decker, Mrs. Bottger, Mrs. Hertle and 
Captain Jericho of the mission schooner Bavaria. 
Mrs. Decker was drowned with her two children just 
as she was returning from furlough. The canoe in 
which she was being landed sank before the eyes of 
her husband, as he awaited her on the shore. Death 
and life were contending for the victory in those days. 
Precious lives were being sacrificed in seemingly fruit- 
less labor. The bulwarks of heathenism remained 
standing, strong and solid. Would the “Miti” over- 
come the native apathy and hostility? 

Animism, more than any other religion, is based on 
fear. Fear is its motive power; fear holds the soul 
of the Papuan in its firm grip; fear controls every 
phase of his life. ‘‘What evils will befall us, if we 
leave the ways of our fathers?’”’ many asked. Yet the 
older people noticed the wholesome influence of the 
mission schools upon the children. The boys, work- 
ing at the stations and being daily instructed by their 
employers, returned to their villages as bearers of 
Christian ideas. The pious, simple life of the mis- 
sionaries, closely watched by the natives, made a deep 
impression on both old and young. An atmosphere of 


210 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


peace surrounded the lives of the Miti-people. The 
transforming power of Christianity irresistibly pene- 
trated the dark realms of heathendom. After mas- 
tering the linguistic difficulties the missionaries testi- 
fied concerning the Prince of Peace in a more effective 
manner. The seed-grains of the Word, which pro- 
duce regeneration of the sinful heart and liberate the 
slaves of idolatry, were sown with untiring patience. 
Kaboing and Kamungsanga of Simbang, Gumbo of 
the Rhenish station Bogadjim, boys employed in the 
service of the mission, were the first applicants for 
baptism. No protests and threats of relatives and 
tribesmen could intimidate them. The walls of 
heathenism were crumbling. A new epoch began. 
Soon other young men followed the example of their 
friends. The missionaries toured the country. New 
stations were established. Older people, hitherto re- 
served and reluctant, asked for instruction. Men and 
women attended school and studied the Bible and cate- 
chism. Baptismal festivals attracted large crowds and 
offered welcome opportunities to reach otherwise deaf 
ears and hard hearts. 

The most formidable stronghold of heathenism in 
New Guinea was ancestor worship, a secret cult, per- 
taining to the veneration of spirits. The name of this 
worship varies in the many different dialects; Balum, 
Ngosa, Asa, Messiab, Barak asf. It literally means 
grandfather worship. The rites and ceremonies of the 
festivals, celebrated at long intervals, were veiled in 
much secrecy. Women and children were excluded. 
The feast required careful preparation. Pigs for the 
sacrifices had to be fattened, dances practised. The 
whizzing of the Balum sticks warned the unbidden not 


SYNOD OF IOWA—NEW GUINEA 211 


to approach the house of the spirits. The grown boys 
were initiated into the mysteries of the Papuan re- 
ligion; a kind of circumcision was performed; new 
chieftains were installed; and the main object of all 
the ceremonies was the strengthening of the men’s 
superiority over the women. The meetings ended in 
vile orgies. 

Finally the secret was revealed by young Christians 
and applicants for baptism, but with great hesitation. 
What would the women think, they said, if the fraud- 
ulency of the cult were exposed! The Truth made 
them free. When the ban of fear and superstition 
was lifted, the Papuans received with joy the message 
of an almighty, loving God, maker and ruler of heaven 
and earth. They saw that the fruits of the fields and 
garden grew without incantations; fear of haunted 
places and evil spirits terrorized their minds no 
longer; sickness and death were not caused by sorcery, 
which demanded bloody sacrifices; trust in God filled 
their souls with strength and patience. The abolition 
of the secret cult inaugurated the movement to Chris- 
tianity. Villages and tribes burnt their charms and 
idols at public meetings. Feuds and quarrels ceased, 
a more peaceful day dawned for New Guinea. 

A fuller apprehension of the first article of Chris- 
tian faith led to a better understanding of the re- 
demption wrought by Christ. Of course, there were 
some other chains to be broken, other sinister powers 
to be eradicated. They learned that sin is the source 
of evil, that sin differs from violation of the tradi- 
tional “‘maja,” that it is transgression of the divine 
law and enslaves man. Enlightened by the Holy 
Spirit, the Papuans saw the grace and glory of Him, 


212 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us 
from all iniquity. And He purified unto Himself also 
a people in New Guinea, zealous of good works. 

In the boarding schools, where the younger gen- 
eration was called to Christ, the missionaries trained 
native helpers. They familiarized the tribesmen with 
the new way, assisted in spreading the gospel, taught 
the children and served as deacons. But is not mis- 
sionary work the sacred duty of the Church, the con- 
gregation? How would the Papuan Church respond 
to the call? It was the missionary pastor of the Sat- 
telberg congregation, Chr. Keysser, who presented the 
matter to his parish. Trustworthy, able men and 
women, commissioned by the native Church, should be 
sent to the inland tribes, dwell among them, befriend 
them, win them for Jesus by a godly life and exemplify 
the blessings of Christianity. “Do not preach, dem- 
onstrate your faith,’’ was the instruction given to the 
four messengers of peace, who were sent to the Hube 
people in 1908. The Sattelbere community pledged 
itself to support “their own missionaries.” God blessed 
this effort. Soon the native home mission work ex- 
ceeded the most sanguine expectations. The other con- 
gregations participated in the movement. The train- 
ing schools for evangelists and teachers were filled 
with ardent students. Mission work became a public 
affair. More than 600 helpers served their country- 
men as peacemakers and witnesses for Christ. The 
barriers which separated the numerous tribes fell 
away. The mountaineers as well as the inhabitants of 
the secluded valleys invited the Miti messengers to 
come. A great harvest was reaped. 

The extension of the work required increase of the 


SYNOD OF IOWA—NEW GUINEA 213 


personnel and expenditure. Industrial stations were 
added, cocoanut plantations were laid out. Printeries 
at Logaweng and Kurum provided the field with school 
books in the rudiments of Christian knowledge. The 
mission stores at Maneba and Ragetta supplied the 
missionaries with the necessities of life and enabled 
the natives to trade their products for the much de- 
sired iron tools of the white man. Each district owned 
a schooner, the funds having been raised by school 
children in Germany, and hence named “Bavaria” and 
“‘Rhenowestphalia.” The Papuans saved their meager 
earnings to build chapels and school houses. Progress 
was made in every direction of peaceful development 
after weary years of setbacks. 

Then came the World War. All connections with 
the home base were cut off. Australian military forces 
occupied the German colony. Two missionaries were 
interned. Inspector Steck, of Neuendettelsau, who 
was visiting the mission field, was taken as a prisoner 
of war. No serious obstacles were placed in the way 
of the continuation of the gospel work, after the ad- 
ministration of the territory had changed. But who 
would provide the means of support? The Iowa synod 
had been contributing large amounts to the New 
Guinea mission for many years. Some missionaries 
had found their helpmeets in Australia. Lutheran lay 
helpers of Australian birth had worked on the New 
Guinea field. No 8S. O. S. call was necessary to show 
the friends in America and Australia their duty. They 
vied with one another in rushing aid. Rev. F. O. 
Theile, a prominent Australian Lutheran, negotiated 
with his government and directed the forwarding of 
money and supplies to the field with untiring efforts. 


214 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Help was extended to the deserted Rhenish brethren, 
who always had maintained friendly relations with 
the Dettelsauer missionaries, but had cultivated no 
contact with the Iowa and Immanuel synods. Except 
through isolation the New Guinea missionaries did not 
suffer as much from the misery created by the war as 
did German missionaries in other fields. The gospel 
movement continued to expand. More Papuans than 
ever were instructed and baptized. 

The real difficulties arose after the war. Paragraph 
438 of the Versailles Treaty decided the fate of Ger- 
man missions, at least temporarily. Northeast New 
Guinea was mandated to the Australian Common- 
wealth. This meant the exclusion of the former Ger- 
man leaders. The Iowa synod and the Australian 
Lutherans, the provisional stewards, were logically 
entitled to succession. But legal questions had to be 
settled first; a basis for co-operation had to be estab- 
lished, and a new management formed. In 1920 the 
Iowa synod delegated its president, Dr. F. Richter, of 
Clinton, Iowa, to sail to Australia and enter into nego- 
tiations with the brethren in the faith and with the 
Australian government. His visit was rewarded by 
most valuable results. Meeting the different synods, 
this experienced, energetic churchman succeeded in 
forming a strong union. “The United Evangelical 
Lutheran Church in Australia” is the name of the new 
federation. The government entrusted the manage- 
ment of the mission to the Boards of the Iowa synod 
and of the Australian Lutheran Church. Deportation 
of the German missionaries was postponed to 1928, 
the Germans to be replaced by American and Austra- 
lian missionaries. But in 1925 the Australian govern- 


SYNOD OF IOWA—NEW GUINEA 215 


ment decided that the German missionaries, working 
under the joint Board, may remain in New Guinea. 

The force in the field declared its willingness to con- 
tinue work under the new administration. Neuendet- 
telsau and Barmen ceded their rights to the succes- 
sors. As the government never had distinguished be- 
tween these two missions and also demanded that the 
mission field should be treated as a whole, another 
union resulted. The Rhenish missionaries pledged 
strict adherence to Lutheran doctrine and principles, 
and thus offered a happy solution to an otherwise vex- 
ing problem. The two adjoining districts, working 
under the same conditions and with the same methods, 
now form a solid unity. Madang is the trade center 
and governmental seat, on which Finschhafen depends 
for its shipment of supplies. 

Pastor Theile was sent to New Guinea in 1921 on 
a tour of inspection, extending over seven months. 
The union of the districts was consummated. The in- 
formation he obtained enabled the Boards to co- 
operate more effectively in the administration of the 
work. Superintendence of the whole field was as- 
signed to Senior Flierl. A general conference now 
regulates at its annual meetings all matters pertain- 
ing to mission work and economic questions. The 
Madang missionaries adopted the Finschhafen sys- 
tem, whereby the mission board provides for house, 
furniture and the daily bread. A new scale of salaries 
became effective January, 1922, as follows: Single 
male workers, £40 annually; married workers, £60 
annually, and single women missionaries, £80. The 
allowance for children amounts to £5 up to 10 years 
of age; thereafter £10. Medical treatment is 





. — 
ee es ee 





bi sends u¥ 





NEW GUINEA MISSION FIELD. 


given free to all missionaries on the field and 
on furlough. After five years of service each 
worker is entitled to a six months’ furlough in 


216 


SYNOD OF IOWA—NEW GUINEA 217 


Australia, where the U. E. L. C. owns rest homes at 
Lights Pass, So. A., and Toowoomba, Qid. A full year 
of vacation may be spent in the respective home coun- 
try after ten years of active service. All final de- 
cisions rest with the responsible boards. Executive 
power is vested in a director at present, Rev. Theile, 
Brisbane, Qld., who was appointed to this office by 
the Iowa synod and the U. E. L. C. In the summer of 
1925 the Iowa Board delegated its secretary, Rev. W. 
F’. Kraushaar, to visit the field. 

The growth of the work, involving a mass move- 
ment toward Christianity called for speedy reinforce- 
ment. Furlough was overdue for most of the mis- 
sionaries. Some of them had served for twenty years 
without interruption. The policy to give the mis- 
sionaries qualified white lay helpers to take care of the 
physical work connected with the mission stations pre- 
sents another problem. How the churches, under the 
direction of the Lutheran New Guinea mission, ful- 
fill their duties, may be shown by statistics. In four 
years thirty-four new missionaries were sent to the 
field, fourteen men and twenty women. Sixteen were 
commissioned by the Iowa synod, among them two or- 
dained missionaries and a physician. The U. E. L. C. 
added eleven lay helpers to the eight Australians al- 
ready on the field. The Australian government 
granted admission to seven German brides, engaged to 
missionaries. The women teachers and nurses from 
the United States are especially appreciated. The ex- 
penditure for furloughs during the last triennium 
amounted to £11,000-0-0. 

An immense task confronts the two synods now en- 
trusted with the New Guinea mission. The problem 


218 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


of replacing the German missionaries, grown gray in 
service, is far from being solved. The financing of 
the work also offers serious difficulties. The total 
staff consists of forty-six white men, twenty-eight of 
them ordained, and forty-two women, of whom thirty- 
two are married. Seventy-five children depend on our 
support. For them we furnish school facilities. The 
Sattelberg school corresponds to our American ele- 
mentary schools. Professional training must be ac- 
quired in the home countries. Two Samoan pastors, 
devoted Christian workers, are a part of the personnel 
in the Madang district. The native congregations re- 
ceive no financial aid; self-support has been the aim 
from the beginning. It is admirable how bravely they 
-meet their obligations. Though belonging to the poor- 
est of the poor, their mission offerings put to shame 
many congregations in America. Nevertheless, the 
annual disbursements for the field work, travel and 
administration, total over $100,000. The debts, ac- 
cumulated during and after the war, when funds were 
insufficient, must be liquidated. So there are many 
obstacles to overcome. The medical mission work is 
supported by the Wartburg Luther League and the 
Mission Auxiliary, an organization which had culti- 
vated active interest in the New Guinea mission long 
before the war. The Ladies’ Aid Societies of Iowa 
and Australia provide Christmas gifts to gladden the 
hearts of Papuan school children and teachers. 
Twenty-seven mission stations with numerous out- 
stations dispense the blessings of the gospel—eight in 
the Madang district, nineteen in the Finschhafen ter- 
ritory. Besides the industrial plants referred to be- 
fore, we have a saw mill at Butaweng, which manu- 


SYNOD OF IOWA—NEW GUINEA 219 


factures building material and furniture; two small 
hospitals at Pola and Amele; two recreation stations, 
Sattelberge and Hansemannberg; four plantations; 
Nagada with 32,000 trees, Heldsbach with 15,000, Sa- 
lankaua with 30,000, Malahang with 31,000. The net 
proceeds furnish a very considerable contribution to 
the treasury. The value of the property held by the 
Lutheran New Guinea mission is estimated at 
$500,000. 

Our most valuable assets are the four training 
schools at Heldsbach, Hopoi, Amele and Kurum; 200 
Melanesians and Papuans are being trained as evan- 
gelists and teachers; 186 native teachers instructed 
5,771 children in 165 schools last year; 18,454 souls 
have received baptismal grace since the light of the 
gospel has been shining in New Guinea; 5,572 bap- 
tisms were reported in 1922-24. The classes under 
Christian instruction enroll 5,900 adults. A popula- 
tion of about 100,000 is being reached and influenced 
by the Word of God. A number of tribes gave up 
their dialects and learned the Muti languages: Kate, 
Jabem, Ragetta, Amele asf. Rev. W. Blum has trans- 
lated the Gospel of Luke into the Ragetta language, 
Rev. E. Schnabel the same into the Kate. A most re- 
markable achievement was the completion of the 
Jabem New Testament, done by Rev. H. Zahn. The 
British and Foreign Bible Society printed it. A Kate 
dictionary, edited by Rev. Ch. Keysser, now instructor 
at the mission seminary at Neuendettelsau, and Prof. 
Dr. Dempwolf, of the University of Hamburg, has 
been printed. 

Our eyes have seen the glory of the Lord! Thus we 
joyfully exclaim as we read the history of the Luth- 


220 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


eran mission in New Guinea. There Christ is glorify- 
ing His name, there the gospel is winning victories as 
in the apostolic days. Cannibals have become children 
of God and praise Him in lives of righteousness. A 
young feeble native Church, inspired and guided by 
the Holy Spirit, is exhibiting evangelistic energy un- 
paralleled in any other field. Christianity is trans- 
forming a savage nation into a useful member of the 
human race. And our Lutheran mission is God’s 
mighty instrument for the spiritual and social uplift 
of the people. The message of Christ and His cross 
has brought the promise of salvation, peace and a 
new era in social life to New Guinea. It is our sacred 
duty, requiring the united effort of all friends of the 
Lutheran New Guinea mission, to carry His gospel 
from shore to shore, till all New Guinea has acknowl- 
edged His saviourship and sovereignty. 


CHAPTER X. 


LUTHERAN FREE CHURCH 
ANDREAS HELLAND 


MADAGASCAR AND CHINA 


The Lutheran Free Church, organized in 1897, has 
its roots in earlier church movements. Immigrants 
who had come from Scandinavia during the second 
and third quarters of the last century formed several 
church bodies, one of which was the Scandinavian 
Augustana Synod, consisting mainly of Swedish and 
Norwegian congregations. For reasons of language 
and nationality an amicable division of this synod was 
effected in 1870. The Norwegian part, which was by 
far the smaller of the two, was formed into what was 
called the Danish-Norwegian Conference. The semi- 
nary of the Scandinavian Augustana Synod had been 
divided a year previous, the new school receiving the 
name of Augsburg Seminary. It was founded at Mar- 
shall, Wis., in 1869; but in 1872 it was moved to its 
present site in Minneapolis, Minn. It remained the 
divinity school of the Conference until the latter 
joined with other Church bodies in 1890, under the . 
name of the United Norwegian Lutheran Church. Dif- 
ficulties arising from this union, due in part to di- 
vergent Church views in the former Conference, re- 
sulted in a division of the United Church in 1898. 

221 


222 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Augsburg Seminary became the divinity school of the 
minority, also called ‘“‘The Friends of Augsburg.” 

The period from 1893 to 1897 was a time of transi- 
tion. In the latter year an organization was effected, 
based mainly on an agreement in regard to leading 
principles of church life and church work, particularly 
concerning such general Church activities as home and 
foreign missions, charity work and Christian educa- 
tion, activities in which free and independent congre- 
gations need mutual help and co-operation. The for- 
eign mission activity of the Lutheran Free Church 
has been carried on since 1899 under the direction of 
an incorporated board, the Lutheran Board of Mis- 
sions. 

Whatever interest the immigrants from Norway 
had in foreign missions they owed to the intense 
Christian life awakened by the Hans Nielsen Hauge 
movement in the early part of the last century, and in 
the missionary interest which was one of the blessed 
fruits of this remarkable religious movement. 

The Norwegian Mission Society had been organized 
in Stavanger, Norway, in 1842, and active work was 
commenced in Zululand, South Africa, in 1844, and 
in the great island of Madagascar in 1866. A warm 
interest for these missions had been awakened from 
the beginning, and many of the immigrants brought 
with them their love for the cause and proved it by 
sending their contributions to the Norwegian Mission 
Society. This was as far as they seemed to have 
faith to go at that time and many were those whose 
love became cold and inactive. It was then that Pro- 
fessor Georg Sverdrup, who in 1876 had become 
president of Augsburg Seminary, commenced to advo- 


LUTHERAN FREE CHURCH—MADAGASCAR = 223 


cate the sending out of missionaries. In 1880 he wrote 
as follows: 

“There is at the present time one thing about which 
Christian men agree, namely, that it belongs to the 
Christian calling to take part in foreign mission work. 
If God has given us eternal salvation by grace alone, 
should it then be impossible for someone among us to 
arise and leave all things and go forth to become a 
fisher of men? So far the Conference has taken part 
in missionary activity only by sending financial aid 
to the Norwegian Mission Society. The next forward 
step, which we can and ought to take, is to commence 
to pray to the Lord of the Harvest that He send forth 
laborers to the mission fields even from our Church 
body, and to seek such laborers. If the missionary 
interest is to be furthered and strengthened among 
us, then let us try to send out our own missionaries.” 

As far as the present writer knows, this was the 
first public plea among the Norwegian Lutherans in 
America, for aggressive foreign mission activity. 
However, it was not Professor Sverdrup’s idea that 
the connection with the society in Norway should be 
severed; he only wished to see men, not merely money, 
sent to the mission field. 


MADAGASCAR 


It took seven years before his ideal was realized. 
In the spring of 1887, John P. Hogstad graduated from 
the theological department of Augsburg Seminary, 
ready and eager to go to the mission field in Madagas- 
ear. On this occasion Professor Sverdrup wrote: “If 
it be God’s will, this year will mark the beginning of 
a new era in the history of our school, inasmuch as the 


224 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


first missionary to the heathen is to be graduated. May 
the Lord grant that it shall not be the last!” 

The next one to give himself as a sacrifice to the 
cause of foreign missions was Erik H. Tou, graduated 
from Augsburg Seminary in 1889. These two men 
were the first missionaries to the heathen to go out 
from among the Norwegian Lutherans in America. 
Their interest had been awakened and their purpose 
strengthened during their period of study at Augsburg 
Seminary, under the wise leadership of Professor 
George Sverdrup. As early as 1884 a missionary so- 
ciety had been formed at the seminary, largely on the 
initiative of Professor Sverdrup. This society, which 
is still in existence, has been no small factor in kin- 
dling missionary interest among the students and 
through them in the congregations. 

Both Hogstad and Tou had been ordained by the 
Conference, and were to be supported by this Church 
body, but were to work in the service of the Norwe- 
gian Mission Society. They were stationed near the 
southern end of Madagascar, Hogstad on the east 
coast and Tou near the west coast. Thus the men and 
the means were forthcoming, though on a small scale; 
and it was natural that the next question to arise was 
that of a separate field. This problem was satisfac- 
torily solved when, in 1892, an agreement was made 
with the Norwegian Mission Society, by which the 
Norwegian American Lutherans should have as their 
field the southern provinces of the island, from St. 
Augustine on the west coast to Manantenina on the 
east coast. On the happy conclusion of this agreement 
Professor Sverdrup wrote: “This news will no doubt 
bring to our congregations much joy and thanksgiving 





REV. J. B. JERSTAD (1898-1911). 


The first Christian Missionary to the Mahafaly tribe in Madagascar. He 
sleeps in the soil of the people to whom he brought the Gospel. 





REV. J. 0. DYRNES, M.D., AND MRS. DYRNES (1900- ). 


For twenty-six years he has been a preacher, teacher, and healer 
the sick in Madagascar. 


of 


LUTHERAN FREE CHURCH—MADAGASCAR = 225 


to God, for they have long felt that a more independent 
and direct missionary activity was needed than we 
have hitherto been engaged in. The news will also 
bring a beneficial sense of responsibility. God has 
now brought these heathen near to the hearts of our 
congregations, so that we may feel that we are ex- 
pected to bring them the gospel of Christ.” 

The division in the United Norwegian Lutheran 
Church in 18938 had its effect on the mission field. By 
friendly agreement the field was divided in such a 
way that the United Church, now the Norwegian 
Lutheran Church, carries on work in the southeastern 
part of Madagascar, and the Lutheran Free Church 
in the southwestern part of the island, mainly among 
the Sakalava, the Bara, the Tanosy and the Mahafaly 
tribes. The field contains about 17,500 square miles, 
and has about 125,000 inhabitants. 

Among the Sakalava the work had been commenced 
a few years earlier, but among the Bara, the Tanosy, 
and the Mahafaly our missionaries were pioneers as 
far as our field is concerned, which is said to be one 
of the hardest mission fields in the world. But even 
these degraded and superstitious tribes, living as they 
do in a very dangerous climate, have been bought with 
a price, even with the blood of Christ, our crucified, 
risen and ever living Saviour. And so our mission- 
aries have gone forth, many to lay down their lives 
in the field, some to return home broken in health. A 
few still are standing on the battle line waiting for 
others to come and join in the work of the Lord in 
Madagascar. 

Forty-seven persons, nineteen men and twenty- 
eight women, have gone out to this mission field. Of 


226 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


these nine have died on the field; two perished at sea 
near Capetown, South Africa, when the steamer on 
which they were going to the field was struck by a 
mine; over twenty have resigned and returned to the 
homeland, in most cases because they were unable to 
endure the climate. Most of them have gone into 
church work at home, where they have done and are 
doing blessed work. Twelve are at present in the field; 
two are home on furlough, and two, Mrs. Molvik and 
Mrs. Halland, are temporarily away from the field 
for the sake of their children, while their husbands 
are continuing their work on the far-off island. 

Of the pioneers, Rev. Tou continued in the service 
until 1903, when, broken in health, he returned home. 
He then worked in the home mission field in North 
Dakota, where he labored faithfully until his death, 
in 1917. In 1904, by agreement with the United Nor- 
wegian Lutheran Church, Rev. Hogstad’s district be- 
came part of the field of that church body, and he 
preferred to continue with the work he had founded. 
He died at his station, Manantenina, in 1911, after a 
long and richly blessed missionary career. 

Of the many other missionaries who have worked 
faithfully in the service of the Lutheran Free Church 
in Madagascar, only one more shall be mentioned here, 
as he holds a unique place. In 1899, J. O. Dyrnes, a 
graduate of the college and theological departments of 
Augsburg Seminary, and also a graduate of the med- 
ical department of Hamline University, left a well- 
established medical practice and accepted a call from 
the Lutheran Free Church to go as a medical mis- 
sionary to Madagascar. He studied in Paris a while, 
and reached Madagascar in 1900. Except for two 


wo - 


_ PE SEE, 


UDJAII|N'T WI aALJON! SPIPLY UOISsIY easesupoyyy 





228 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


short furloughs he has labored in this field contin- 
uously for twenty-five years, preaching, teaching and 
healing the sick. He is the superintendent of the mis- 
sion, and is at present the only medical missionary 
in Madagascar. 

Missionary activity is carried on at eight main sta- 
tions, with several out-stations grouped around each. 
Manasoa, five to six days’ journey inland from Tulear 
on the Onilahy River, forms the center of the whole 
mission. Here are located a boys’ asylum, a girls’ 
asylum, a primary school, and a normal school, a 
Bible school and medical mission work. This mission 
station is a Christian village of fair size. 


CHINA 


Although it occasionally seemed difficult to raise the 
necessary funds for the work in Madagascar, voices 
were raised from time to time, advocating that mis- 
Sionary activity should be commenced also in China. 
Many members of the Lutheran Free Church had be- 
come interested in this vast field, and they did not 
favor the idea of sending their donations through 
other church bodies. In 1912 a committee was ap- 
pointed to take the matter under advisement. This 
committee recommended the undertaking very 
strongly, with the result that the annual convention 
of the Lutheran Free Church in 19138 directed the 
Lutheran Board of Missions to commence missionary 
work in China as soon as practicable. 

One year afterwards, in 1914, the first missionary 
was sent to China by the Lutheran Free Church; and 
in 1915 four more were sent. The first couple of 
years were devoted by the missionaries to the study 


LUTHERAN FREE CHURCH—CHINA 229 


of the language, and at the same time a search was 
being made by them for a suitable field. 

Upon recommendation of the first two missionaries 
sent out, and after consultation with missionary lead- 
ers both in China and at home, a field was chosen, 
which is situated in the northeastern part of the pro- 
vince of Honan, centering about the cities of Kweiteh, 
Suichow, Checheng and Luyi. In all of these cities 
stations are now maintained as centers of missionary 
activity. The population of the field served by the 
Lutheran Free Church in China is somewhat over two 
millions. The Lutheran Free Church has at the pres- 
ent time eleven missionaries in this field, five men 
and six women. The work is mainly evangelistic, 
though educational work of a primary grade is well 
under way. 

In 1919, Dr. E. C. Andreassen and wife were sent 
out to China to begin medical mission work. After 
a year devoted to language study, Dr. Andreassen col- 
laborated with the Canadian Episcopal mission in 
their hospital in Kweiteh, until the fall of 1924. Since 
then the Lutheran Board of Missions has carried on 
its medical mission work in the city of Luyi. A clinic 
and a dispensary have been established, but there is as 
yet no hospital. 

“The Friends of Augsburg’ commenced to give 
financial aid to Missionaries Hogstad and Tou imme- 
diately after the division in 18938, but it was not until 
1895 that a more active campaign for money was in- 
augurated. The two men who took a leading part in 
this work from its inception were Professors George 
Sverdrup and J. H. Blegen. 


230 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


When, in 1899, the missionary activity of the Luth- 
eran Free Church was incorporated under the name of 
Lutheran Board of Missions, with its head office in 
Minneapolis, Professor Sverdrup was elected secre- 
tary. He had indeed been the soul of the undertaking 
from the beginning, and he continued his unselfish 
service until his death in 1907. It was in a great 
measure due to his untiring love for the cause that the 
mission survived the first trying decade of its exist- 
ence. The dangerous climate, the slowness of the 
natives to accept the gospel, the many deaths, the 
great difficulties at home, with only a comparatively 
few, financially weak, congregations to support the 
cause—all these factors combined to make progress 
very difficult. 

Upon the death of Professor Sverdrup, in 1907, the 
writer of this sketch was elected secretary and served 
for twelve years. The work of the secretary had by 
that time increased to such an extent that it was found 
necessary to secure a man for the position who could 
devote all of his time to the work. Rev. Johan Matt- 
son, who had been a member of the Board of Direc- 
tors of the Lutheran Board of Missions for nine years, 
and its president for three years, was elected to the 
office of secretary in the summer of 1919, a position 
which he still holds. 

Professor J. H. Blegen was elected treasurer for 
the Madagascar mission of “The Friends of Augs- 
burg” in 18938, and for the Lutheran Board of Missions 
in 1899. He continued in this capacity until in June 
of the present year, when he resigned on account of 
advanced years and failing health, Few men have 
enjoyed the love and confidence of the congregations, 


LUTHERAN FREE CHURCH MISSIONS 231 


as well as of their fellow workers to such a degree as 
Professor Blegen, and it has been a confidence always 
well deserved. 

A small missionary monthly, Gasseren, was started 
in 1900, and continued to be published until in 1916 it 
was merged with Folkebladet, the official organ of the 
Lutheran Free Church. 

During the first ten years of the Madagascar mis- 
sion of the Lutheran Free Church a comparatively 
large number of young people offered their services 
as missionaries, and it was very difficult to raise the 
necessary funds for the work. There came a period 
when this condition of things was reversed. How- 
ever, there has always been someone ready and will- 
ing to go when and where most needed. The last few 
years have witnessed a renewed interest in missions 
among the young people, which promises greater 
things for the future. 

For statistics in connection, with this chapter, the 
reader is referred to the table of statistics at the close 
of this book. 


CHAPTER XI. 


SYNOD OF MISSOURI, OHIO AND OTHER 
STATES , 


FREDERICK BRAND 
INDIA AND CHINA 


At the organization of the Missouri synod in 1847 
foreign mission effort was designated as one of its 
objectives, but the extensive home mission work to 
which the synod was called to give immediate atten- 
tion made it impossible to begin missionary opera- 
tions in non-Christian countries. Nevertheless, a mis- 
sion among the American Indians in northern Mich- 
igan was carried on. 

The Synodical Conference, of which the Missouri 
synod is a constituent body, at its organization in 
1872, also declared its intention to establish missions 
among the heathen. Before going to foreign lands the 
Synodical Conference began work among some of the 
freed colored people in the South of the United States. 
This American negro mission has been abundantly 
blessed and is today in a very flourishing condition. 
However, the obligation to carry the gospel to non- 
Christian countries always was recognized. In 1893 
the Delegate synod planned the opening of a mission 
in Japan and steps were taken to organize this enter- 
prise, but before the plan could be matured, a call 
came from an entirely different quarter to enter an 
altogether unconsidered field. 

232 


SYNOD OF MISSOURI—INDIA 233 


INDIA 


In British India, Theodore Naether and Franz Mohn, 
missionaries of the German Leipsic mission, for rea- 
sons of conscience, had found it necessary, in 1893, to 
protest against certain policies of that society and 
were dismissed. They then offered their services to 
the Missouri synod. Upon request they came to the 
United States for a conference concerning their doc- 
trinal position and were received into synodical mem- 
bership after their full agreement with the Missouri 
synod had been established. On October 14, 1894, they 
were commissioned and this date, therefore, marks the 
actual beginning of the present foreign mission enter- 
prise of the Missouri synod. 

The new missionaries were charged not only to 
keep away from their former field of activity, but also 
to avoid locating at any place where Christian mis- 
sions were being conducted. Naether immediately 
returned to India and after a careful and searching 
survey of unoccupied territory finally recommended 
that Krishnagiri in the Salem district of the Madras 
Presidency be occupied. His recommendation was ac- 
cepted and Krishnagiri, therefore, is the oldest sta- 
tion of the Missouri synod mission in India. Because 
of impaired health Mohn remained in Germany, until 
he followed Naether to India in 1896. 

Two additional missionaries of the Leipsic mission, 
George O. Kellerbauer (1895) and Reinhold Freche 
(1898) who found it impossible to continue in that 
connection, also applied for membership in the Mis- 
souril synod and were received after their agreement 
in Lutheran doctrine and practice had been fully es- 


234 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


tablished. Fields of labor were assigned them near 
Krishnagiri. In quick succession stations were opened 
at Bargur by Kellerbauer, Ambur by Mohn, and Vani- 
yambadi by Freche. The two last-named stations are 
in the North Arcot district. As the missionary forces 
were augmented, the mission work was extended to 
more distant points, and new stations were opened 
in the Kolar gold fields and in Kollegal of Mysore 
State. The section of India in which the Missouri 
synod carried on its work up to this time now is 
called the Northern Field, because it lies north by 
east of Travancore, whither the mission afterwards 
went. The Travancore district, therefore, is called the 
Southern Field. 

From the very inception of the work in India evan- 
gelization by missionary preaching tours was one of 
the chief methods of making Christ known to the peo- 
ple. Extensive journeys were undertaken and the 
whole district was filled with the message of the gos- 
pel. This preaching was distinctly positive. The Bible 
was declared to be the divinely inspired, inerrant and 
perfect Word of the living God and the only rule of 
faith and life. Jesus Christ, the God-man, was exalted 
as the substitutionary sacrifice for the redemption of 
the lost world and as the ever present, living and lov- 
ing, perfect Saviour and Lord. Evangelization is de- 
signed under the influence of the Spirit of God to pro- 
duce conversion from the power of Satan to God. This 
positive message is stressed in all the foreign mission- 
ary effort of the Missouri synod. But Christian day- 
schools are considered to be equal in importance to 
evangelization. While the latter attempts to reach 
chiefly the adults, the former are conducted to meet 


SYNOD OF MISSOURI—INDIA 235 


the needs of the growing youth. Wherever possible 
primary schools were opened. 

A boarding school for boys and another one for 
girls were established. Both now have been perma- 
nently located at Ambur, where a secondary school 
also was opened, in which it is planned to educate 
young men for service in the mission. Ambur, more- 
over, has a Bible institute for men and a training 
school for Bible women. 

A further stride forward was made in 19138, when 
medical work was begun on a very humble scale. That 
year Miss L. Ellerman, a graduate nurse, was sent out 
for this department of work. An unpretentious hos- 
pital was built in 1921-22, under the direction of Dr. 
Theo. J. Doederlein, who had been sent out as a short- 
term worker. The plant is without a missionary phy- 
sician at present, but is doing splendid work under 
the supervision of Miss A. Rehwinkel, R. N., who is 
ably assisted by Miss Ellerman. A branch nursing 
station was opened in Krishnagiri in 1928, which now 
is under the care of Miss EK. Herold, R. N. Zenana 
work carried on by Miss Ellerman in connection with 
her labors as a nurse was in 1921 placed in charge of 
Miss A. Georgi. 

Work among the large Mohammedan population of 
this section had been attempted only in an indifferent 
way until 1928, when A. A. Brux, Ph.D., was called 
and sent out to engage in this important undertaking. 
It is too early to speak of any other results than that 
the usual Mohammedan opposition is becoming more 
pronounced. 

In addition to the first missionaries already named, 
the following have been in our service: A. Huebener, 


236 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


G. A. Naumann, F. Forster, H. Nau, G. Kuechle, H. 
Hamann, M.A., E. Ludwig, J. Williams, H. Stallman, 
Dr. Theo. J. Doederlein. 

The present foreign staff consists of E. A. Noffke 
(Australia, 1920) and Miss E. L. Herold, R. N. 
(1921), at Krishnagiri; L. Boriack (1921), F. J. H. 
Blaess (Australia, 1922), Miss A. Rehwinkel, R. N. 
(1921), Miss L. Ellerman, R. N. (1918), Miss A. 
Georgi (1921), H. Schulz (1925), at Ambur; J. Harms 
(1912), A. A. Brux, Ph.D. (1923) at Vaniyambadi; 
M. G. Kuolt (1923) at Kolar Gold Fields, Mysore 
State; P. F. Heckel, M.A. (1921), at Madras. 

The southern or Travancore field was opened in 
1907. Appeals had come from Nagercoil for Luth- 
eran work by G. Jesudason and wife, descendants of 
the early Lutheran Christians, who had been won for 
Christ by Missionary William F. Ringeltaube. Mis- 
sionaries A. Huebener and H. Nau were sent down 
from the northern field to ascertain whether scriptural 
grounds compelled them to heed the cry for help. 
When it was seen that not only the Christians at 
Nagercoil but literally thousands upon thousands of 
heathen were altogether without the means of grace, 
A. Huebener was assigned to the new field. Theodore 
Gutknecht, who had recently come to India from the 
States, also was sent to Travancore. In the course 
of time other missionaries joined them. They found 
an open door and soon extended the work throughout 
Southern Travancore and into Tinnevelly, where sta- 
tions have been opened at Vadakangulam and Valliur. 

In 1912 the northern section of Travancore was en- 
tered. A station was opened in a suburb of Trivan- 
drum under the supervision of Missionary H. Nau. 


SYNOD OF MISSOURI—INDIA 237 


The mission had now gotten into a new language area. 
From the Salem and North Arcot districts all the way 
down to Southern Travancore, Tamil is the prevail- 
ing vernacular. In Trivandrum, with its outlying dis- 
tricts, and in Northern Travancore Malayalam is 
spoken. Both tongues belong to the family of Dra- 
vidian languages. Telugu, another Dravidian tongue, 
is used only in a small section of the Missouri mission 
field. In the course of time it was possible to push 
onward far into the northern section of Travancore. 
A main station was opened at Balaramapuram, and 
more recently one was located at Nilamail among the 
aboriginal Vedar hill tribes. 

Evangelistic work has been stressed less in Travan- 
core than in the northern field. So many doors of 
opportunity were opened to the missionaries that they 
were fully occupied in the service of those who came 
of their own accord. Much attention was given to ele- 
mentary and secondary education. At Nagercoil there 
are a girls’ and boys’ boarding school, an institute for 
training teachers and catechists, and the small Con- 
cordia Theological Seminary. The seminary was 
founded in 1923. The Trivandrum section also has a 
large number of elementary schools, a secondary 
school (incomplete), a boys’ and girls’ boarding school 
and an institute for training teachers and catechists. 

A school for missionaries’ children has been in oper- 
ation since 1922. It is located at Kodaikanal, where 
the mission has a beautiful summer retreat for the 
workers. This school is in charge of Mr. P. Bach- 
mann, an American pedagogue. The average attend- 
ance has been twelve pupils. It is planned eventually 
to add a high school course. 


238 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


The mission was greatly crippled by the recent 
World War. After the first missionaries had either 
retired or gone to their heavenly home, their places 
were filled by younger men, sent out from the States. 
Among them were a number of men from Germany, 
who had pursued their theological studies at Con- 
cordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo. To all intents and 
purposes, they were Americans. They had failed, 
however, to become naturalized citizens and, conse- 
quently, were repatriated by Great Britain. Those 
who were on furlough at the outbreak of the war could 
not return to their field of labor. As a consequence 
many stations were without adequate supervision and 
guidance until new forces could be sent out. 

It is the policy of the mission not to acquire ex- 
pensive property nor to erect elaborate mission plants. 
This policy looks to the future of the Church in India. 
Inasmuch as it is the Board’s intention to turn over in 
fee simple all mission property to the Lutheran 
Church in India as soon as it is ready to assume the 
responsibility, the buildings are erected without undue 
luxury. Although the day of the self-support of the 
Church in India still seems far away, the mission is 
striving to hasten the coming of that day as soon as 
possible. 

The following missionaries, who labored in Travan- 
core since 1907, are no longer in our service: A. 
Huebener, G. Huebener, H. Nau, O. A. Ehlers, J. 
Harms (now in the Northern Field). The Misses G. 
Strieter and H. Ziegfeld, who are still in India, have 
been married to missionaries. The present foreign 
staff consists of Th. Gutknecht (1907), R. W. Georss 
(1918), A. J. Lutz (1912), H.. E> Levihn» €1928); 


SYNOD OF MISSOURI—CHINA . 239 


George C. Schroeder (1921), R. Brauer (1925), all at 
Nagercoil; E. H. Meinzen (1922), at Vadakangulam; 
B. Strasen (1921), at Valliur; F. R. Zucker (1910), 
P. M. Kauffeld (1921), G. Oberheu (1921), at Trivan- 
drum; A. C. Fritze (1921), at Balaramapuram; R. M. 
Jank (1921), among the Vedars. 

The South India Evangelical Lutheran Church.— 
In 19238 a number of Tamil Lutherans who had severed 
their relation to the Church of Sweden mission, for- 
merly the Leipsic mission, because of doctrinal dif- 
ferences, applied to the Missouri synod for counsel 
and care. They organized five small congregations in 
various sections of South India, the chief of which is 
at Madras in charge of Pastor N. Samuel. Mission- 
ary P. F. Heckel, M. A., has been their supervising 
missionary for the past two years. 


CHINA 


The Missouri Evangelical Lutheran China Mission 
was begun in 1912, through the organization of the 
Evangelical Lutheran Missionary Society for China 
at Gaylord, Minn. The members of this organization 
were connected with synods of the Synodical Confer- 
ence, chiefly the synods of Missouri and of Wisconsin. 
The Rev. E. L. Arndt, who had been the prime mover 
_ in organizing the society, was sent out in 1913 as the 
first missionary with instructions to open a station 
where no Lutheran work was being done. He directed 
the attention of the Board to Hankow, which became 
Missouri’s first station in China. In 1917 the mission 
was transferred by the society to the Missouri synod. 
Since then new stations have been opened at Shihnanfu 
(1920), Ichang (1921), Shasi (1923), Kweifu (1923) 


240 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


and Wanhsien (1923). The last two named are in 
Szechwan Province, all the others in Hupeh. 

Educational work is conducted on lines very similar 
to those in India. Day schools are established as soon 
as possible. The secular branches taught in these 
schools are spiritualized by the Word of God. The 
creation of Christian faith is the main objective of 
instruction in these schools. It is the policy of the 
mission to employ only Lutheran teachers. Because 
they must be trained before they are employed, their 
number is still necessarily small. But earnest efforts 
are being made to increase the supply. At Hankow 
a secondary school has been opened topped with Con- 
cordia Theological Seminary. The number of students 
is not large, but the outlook is promising. The theolog- 
ical course, as in India, is being conducted chiefly in 
the vernacular. Very little English has been intro- 
duced. If present plans mature, a full language course 
including the sacred tongues will be introduced in the 
near future. 

Great pains are being taken not to introduce West- 
ern customs into the Orient. As long as native con- 
ventions are not sinful, the mission has no interest in 
changing them. Moreover, it goes without saying that 
the Christians of the churches are taught to be sub- 
ject to their national government. Lutherans do not 
engage in revolutions. In 1921 a missionary moun- 
tain retreat was established at Kuling, about 150 
miles east of Hankow, in Kiangsi Province. 

Medical work was begun at Shihnanfu in 1922. 
It now is in charge of two American nurses, the 
Misses M. Oelschlaeger, R. N. (1923), and Martha 
Baden, R. N. (1925). In their limited sphere they 














PROFESSORS AND STUDENTS OF THE MISSOURI LUTHERAN SEMINARY, 
NAGERCOIL, INDIA. 





MISSOURI LUTHERAN MISSION MOUNTAIN RETREAT, KODAIKANAL, 























MISSOURI LUTHERAN MISSION CONFERENCE IN CHINA, 1924. 





ORPHANS IN CHINA WAITING FOR THEIR BREAKFAST. 
Chopsticks are held in the right hand, bowls in the left hand. 


SYNOD OF MISSOURI—CHINA 241 


are doing valuable and blessed work. Girls’ boarding 
schools have been opened in Hankow and in Shihnan. 
The Hankow school is in charge of Miss O. Gruen 
(1921), and is very promising. At Shihnan, Miss F. 
Oelschlaeger (1923) is just getting her school organ- 
ized. An orphanage also is conducted at this station. 


Wars in the interior of China have greatly hindered 
the extension of the work. On one occasion Shihnan 
was invaded by a band of fanatical soldiers and the 
families of the missionaries had to be removed to safer 
quarters. Later military operations carried on in the 
neighborhood of Ichang interfered very much with 
quiet and sustained missionary endeavor. For various 
reasons very little real estate has been acquired by 
the mission. All work is conducted in rented and re- 
fitted buildings. Recently a sum of money was set 
aside for buying and building purposes, but on ac- 
count of the political disturbances further steps in se- 
curing property have been suspended. 

The foreign mission work of the Missouri synod is 
carried on in conjunction with the Norwegian Evan- 
gelical Lutheran Synod of North America, which is 
represented on the home Board by Dr. S. C. Yilvisaker, 
of Madison, Wis. Generous help also has been given 
by the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Australia, which 
has three men in the field, and by the Evangelical 
Lutheran Joint Synod of Wisconsin and Other States. 

Since the opening of the work in China the follow- 
ing missionaries have been in our service and have 
retired: H. Gihring (1920-1922), H. Bentrup (1919- 
1924), L. J. Schwartzkopf (1919-1924), Dr. P. Kleid 
(1924). 


242 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


The present foreign staff consists of E. L. Arndt 
(1913), E. Riedel (1915), L. Meyer (1917), M. H. 
Zschiegner (1921), C. F. Schmidt (1922), J. A. 
Fischer (1923), Olive Gruen (1921), all at Hankow; 
H. W. Theiss (1921), at Ichang; A. C. Scholz (1921), 
at Shasi; C. D. Nagel (Australia, 1922), at Kweifu; 
A. H. Gebhardt (1918), H. Klein (1921), A. H. Zieg- 
ler (1922), Miss Frieda Oelschlaeger (1923), Miss 
Marie Oelschlaeger, R. N. (1928), Miss Martha Baden, 
R. N. (1925), all at Shihnan; George O. Lillegard 
(Norwegian Synod, 1921), at Wanhsien. 

May the Lord graciously continue to grant His bless- 
ing for the extension of His kingdom. 


CHAPTER XII. 


OTHER LUTHERAN BODIES AND AGENCIES 
SANTAL MISSION AMERICAN COMMITTEE 
J. H. BLEGEN 


The Santal Mission of the Northern Churches, for- 
merly called “The Indian Home Mission to the San- 
tals,” was started as an independent effort in Sep- 
tember, 1867, by Mr. H. P. Borresen, a Dane, and Mr. 
L. O. Skrefsrud, a Norwegian. When their work be- 
came known in the Scandinavian countries, first by the 
visit of Skrefsrud to Norway in 1878, and later by the 
visit of Borresen to Denmark in 1876, widespread in- 
terest for their missions was awakened in both coun- 
tries. Committees were organized to render financial 
aid and the two missionaries were ordained by bishops 
in their respective home churches. Continued and in- 
creasing support from the home lands enabled the 
Santal mission to grow to be one of the most pros- 
perous Scandinavian missions. At present the force 
of workers is about fifty men and women from the 
home lands, and 524 native workers, of whom twenty- 
one are native pastors. The number of Christians on 
September 30, 1924, was 26,392, the increase during 
the year being 950. 

The co-operation of American Lutherans in the San- 
tal mission began with the organization of the Amer- 
ican Santal Committee on November 1, 1891, which 

243 


244 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


consisted of the following: Prof. Sven Oftedal, Mr. H. — 
Bottelsen, Mr. B. O. Christensen, Rev. J. C. Roseland, 
Rev. M. Falk Gjertsen and Prof. J. H. Blegen from the 
United Norwegian Lutheran Church, and Rev. N. G. 
Peterson, Rev. C. P. Svingen and Rev. I. Histeinsen 
from the Hauge Synod. 

In 1894, L. O. Skrefsrud, one of the founders of the 
Santal mission, visited America and presented his 
cause in a great number of Norwegian Lutheran 
churches. Wherever he traveled he aroused interest 
in his station and received liberal offerings. In 1895 
the Committee began to publish a paper Santal-mis- 
sionaeren, in order to develop interest in the mission. 
Rev. N. G. Peterson served as editor during the first 
two years. Since 1897, Prof. J. H. Blegen has edited 
the paper. 

Until 1912 donations averaged about $5,500 a year. 
Since that time donations from Lutherans in America 
have increased considerably. The formation of a San- 
tal Committee in the Danish Evangelical Lutheran 
Church in 1913 is the main cause of this increase. In 
1924 the donations received by the two committees 
amounted to about $17,000. 

The American Santal Committee has sent out eight 
missionaries, three men and five women. Of these 
Rev. and Mrs. M. A. Pedersen, who arrived in India 
in October, 1904, are now in charge of the mission 
station of Ebenezer, where the two founders lived 
until their death. In the fall of 1920, Miss Dagmar 
Miller, of the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church, 
was sent out. She is stationed at Haraputa in the 
Assam Colony. Five American missionaries recently 
arrived in the mission field. They are Rev. J. M. Girtz, 


OTHER LUTHERAN BODIES AND AGENCIES 245 


Mr. O. S. Bjerkestrand, and the Misses Anna Oleson, 
Hazel Alberts and Mabel Hansen. 

The American Santal Committee now consists of 
fourteen members, five of whom are from the Nor- 
wegian Lutheran Church, three from the Lutheran 
Free Church, two each from the Danish Evangelical 
Lutheran Churches, one from the Church of the Luth- 
eran Brethren, and one from the Eilsen’s synod. The 
officers are: Rev. A. J. Hulting, president; Rev. P. M. 
Petersen, vice president, and Prof. J. H. Blegen, sec- 
retary and treasurer, who is the American trustee for 
the Santal Mission. The three committees, in Den- 
mark, Norway, and the United States, co-operate in 
the government of the mission. 


LUTHERAN ORIENT MISSION SOCIETY 
N. J. LOHRE 


This society is a voluntary, inter-synodical organi- 
zation, co-operating with a similar association at Her- 
mannsburg, Germany, known as Der Verein fuer 
lutherische Mission in Persien. 

At the World Missionary Conference held in Edin- 
burgh, Scotland, in 1910, a group meeting of delegates 
interested in Christian missions among Moslems as- 
signed to the Lutheran Church responsibility for work 
among the Moslem Kurds. To meet this responsibility 
the Inter-synodical Evangelical Lutheran Orient Mis- 
sion Society was organized on September 8, 1910, in 
the Swedish Lutheran Church at Berwyn, near Chi- 
cago, Ill. 

The society sent Rev. L. O. Fossum, of the Norwe- 
gian Lutheran Church, and Dr. and Mrs. E. Edmund, 
of the Augustana Synod, to Soujbulak, Persia. Later 


246 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


a missionary from Germany and one from Russia 
were sent out. These, under the leadership of Fos- 
sum, established the mission. Fossum also created. a 
written language for the Kurds, in which he produced 
the following literature: Luther’s Smali Catechism, a 
hymn book and liturgy, a Kurdish-English grammar 
and a translation of the New Testament. The first 
three books were printed by the society, and the 
American Bible Society printed and distributed the 
four Gospels translated by Fossum. 

The exigencies of the World War compelled with- 
drawal from Soujbulak in 1916. In 1919, Dr. Fos- 
sum and two others returned to the field, locating for 
the time being at Erivan, Armenia, at the foot of 
Mt. Ararat, where Rev. George H. Bachimont, of 
Alsace, France, representing the society in Hermanns- 
burg, joined them. Prevented by the war from doing 
any effective missionary work the missionaries en- 
tered the service of the Near East Relief at Erivan. 
Dr. Fossum was district commander of the relief 
forces until shortly before his death on October 10, 
1920. Bachimont and the other missionaries then pro- 
ceeded to Soujbulak and resumed the work, which 
again was interrupted on October 7, 1921, when Bach- 
imont was killed during a raid of bandits. Dr. Schalk, 
who for several years had served as a medical mis- 
sionary in Turkey, led the missionaries back to Souj- 
bulak and there they resumed the mission work on 
January 9, 1924. The society now has the following 
missionaries in this field: one doctor, one pastor, two 
nurses and two other women missionaries. It em- 
ploys as native assistants one doctor and one evan- 
gelist. In 1924 the income of the society amounted to 


OTHER LUTHERAN BODIES AND AGENCIES 247 


$20,199.74. The official organ of the society is the 
Kurdistan Missionary. The officers of the Board are: 
President, Rev. Henry Moehling, Jr., Philadelphia, 
Pa.; Vice-President, Mr. R. H. Carroll, Rochester, N. 
Y.; Recording Secretary, Rev. H. Mackensen, South- 
ington, Conn.; Executive Secretary and Treasurer, 
Rev. N. J. Lohre, 425 4th St., So., Minneapolis, Minn. 


LUTHERAN BRETHREN 
E. M. BROEN 


The Lutheran Brethren synod, organized in 1900, 
has a total membership of 1400 in twenty-seven con- 
gregations, scattered over several western states. At 
the organization it was decided that a mission in 
China should be one of the first objectives of the new 
synod. Mr. and Mrs. R. Kilen sailed for China in 
1902. After a year of language study at one of the 
Swedish Covenant stations, they located in a thickly 
settled district on both sides of the border-line of the 
Hupeh and Honan provinces in Central China, con- 
taining one walled city, Tsaoyang, and several smaller 
cities, with a total population of about a million and a 
half. The mission now has three main stations, twenty 
out-stations, a total of 500 baptized converts, about 
600 children in the mission schools. The mission prop- 
erty is valued at $25,000. The pioneer missionary, 
Mr. Kilen, died in 1913. His wife has faithfully con- 
tinued the work and now is teaching a large girls’ 
school in Tsaoyang. In 1924 she was captured by 
bandits and suffered all kinds of hardships at their 
hands for three weeks, when she was finally released. 
Missionary B. A. Hoff was killed during the raids of 
the bandits and his wife was ,wounded, but she has 


248 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


recovered and is continuing as a missionary. The num- 
ber of missionaries on the field and on furlough is at 
present fourteen; the annual budget, $15,000. 

In 1916 the Brethren Synod sent out two married 
couples and one single woman missionary to the 
Sudan in Africa. A large district in French Camer- 
oon, with a population of about a million, has been 
chosen as its field. Buildings are under construction 
and a yearly budget of $8,000 will be provided. 


SOCIETY FOR LUTHERAN MISSIONS IN RUSSIA 
C. J. SODERGREN 


This society, with headquarters in Minneapolis, is 
an independent organization consisting of interested 
members of various Lutheran bodies. It was organ- 
ized in 1919. In 1921, Rev. C. J. Sodergren, D.D., 
president of the society, was commissioned to visit 
Siberia for the purpose of selecting strategic sites for 
mission stations. He was accompanied by Rev. N. F. 
Hoijer. They planned to visit Vladivostok and the 
Amur River, but a severe storm of ten days’ duration 
drove them through Behring Strait and around the 
northeast corner of Siberia. After arriving at Anadyr 
they discovered that the war had played such havoc 
with the shipping that there were no means of trans- 
portation beyond this point. Their attention was 
drawn to the sad spiritual and temporal state of 
Tchuckchees and Eskimos in these parts, with the re- 
sult that the society, since that time, has made them 
the object of its mission work. 

A station was established at Nuokan, Siberia, a 
large Eskimo village, but the missionaries were or- 
dered out by the Russian Bolsheviki and their pro- 


OTHER LUTHERAN BODIES AND AGENCIES 249 


visions were confiscated. They then retreated to 
Little Diomede Island, which belongs to the United 
States. Under the protection of our government, a 
Norwegian couple, Nyseter, and Victor Carlsen, of 
Minneapolis, are at work on the island, ably assisted 
by Harry Soxie, a native Eskimo, trained at the Luth- 
eran Bible Institute in St. Paul, Minn. Many Eskimos 
cross in their skin boats or on the ice from Big Dio- 
mede Island, a Russian possession three miles dis- 
tant, and from the Siberian coast some twenty-five 
miles away. A number of converts have been bap- 
tized and are receiving instruction in our Lutheran 
faith. The missionaries must contend with very severe 
climatic conditions, the stupidity of the natives, the 
immorality of the whalers, traders and adventurers, 
and the language problem. 

A small schooner which was used for two years 
and wrecked three times is no longer seaworthy. A 
new and larger schooner took its place, but was 
wrecked just below Teller, the site of the Norwegian 
Lutheran mission in Alaska. A young prospective 
worker in the field, Mr. Bohman, was drowned, and 
our pioneer missionary, Hoijer, died shortly after 
from exposure. The income of the society in 1924 
was $1,420. 


SUDAN MISSION 
M. W. HALVERSON. 


The Board of the Sudan Mission consists of four- 
teen members and eighteen associate members, banded 
together for the purpose of making the gospel of Jesus 
Christ known especially among the inhabitants of the 
Sudan in Africa. For over two years Mr. and Mrs. A. 


250 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


E. Gunderson and three single women missionaries 
have been at work in French Cameroon. The head- 
quarters of this society is in Minneapolis. Dr. J. A. 
O. Stub is president and Rev. M. W. Halverson, of 
Beloit, Wis., secretary. It is supported entirely by, 
free-will offerings. 


NATIONAL LUTHERAN COUNCIL 


FOREIGN MISSION CONSERVATION 
J. A. MOREHEAD 


The World War immediately resulted in many dis- 
locations within the sphere of the Christian Church. 
The provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty tended 
to make some of these changes more or less perma- 
nent. By virtue of its very nature the work of foreign 
missions, extending beyond national borders and con- 
necting the spiritual and moral life of groups within 
different nations, has been especially at the mercy of 
the dislocating and destroying power of ruthless war. 
Not only were communications interrupted and the 
power of supporting Christian missions by men and 
money diminished, but the missionary societies in 
more than one country of Europe were entirely sep- 
arated from their mission fields, which were left in 
a dangerously stranded condition. Thus the India, 
China and Africa missions of the Finnish and Ger- 
man societies found themselves uncared-for and “or- 
phaned.” 

While the Roman Catholic and Reformed Churches 
were in like manner affected in their work by the con- 
sequences of the war, the Lutheran Churches of Cen- 
tral Europe, which had developed splendid mission ac- 


OTHER LUTHERAN BODIES AND AGENCIES 251 


tivity in various foreign fields, saw especially large in- 
terests placed in jeopardy. Even amidst the first shock 
and confusion of the terrible catastrophe of 1914, 
when missionaries in the foreign fields were interned, 
an effort was made to give such temporary assistance 
as was possible to these distressed missions by foreign 
missions of the same confession in neighboring fields. 
The friends of foreign missions in America and in the 
Scandinavian countries of Northern Europe were not 
insensible to the critical situation. But the discovery 
of a way for effective action for the preservation of 
these distressed foreign missions of European so- 
cieties was no easy problem in view of the impossibil- 
ity of realizing at first the extent of the catastrophe. 
Moreover, while every student of Christian missions 
knew that there were missionary societies of the 
Lutheran Church in Finland and Germany, which had 
been cultivating mission fields patiently and prayer- 
fully for years in China, India and Africa, there was 
in foreign mission circles in America no intimate and 
complete knowledge of the strength of the native 
Churches, preaching stations, schools, inner mission 
institutions, native workers, foreign missionary forces, 
budgets and other matters necessary to be known for 
purposes of sound missionary administration. 

The first act toward meeting the serious emergency 
was the appropriation on April 24, 1919, of $1,800 for 
famine relief among the Lutherans of India. On the 
same occasion the Foreign Missions Boards of the 
various bodies participating in the National Lutheran 
Council were each requested to appoint one represent- 
ative for the purpose of careful study in conference 
of the Lutheran foreign mission situation throughout 


252 ' OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


the world. In consequence of this action, foreign mis- 
sion conferences were held in Chicago on July lst and 
again on July 29th of the year 1919. These foreign 
mission conferences gave expression to the conviction 
that the Lutheran Church bodies of America would 
' doubtless feel it to be their duty to assume the control 
and support of distressed Lutheran foreign missions, 
and requested the National Lutheran Council to repre- 
sent the interest of Lutheran foreign missions in gen- 
eral and of the individual Lutheran Foreign Mission 
Boards in particular before the proper authorities at 
Washington with the assurance of their willingness 
to assume responsibility for these distressed missions 
of European societies in cases where for any reason 
they were unable to control and support their own 
work. Thus a beginning in securing an intelligent 
grasp of the entire problem was made and the first 
steps in the direction of definite action were taken. 
In the organization of the National Lutheran Coun- 
cil a specific field at home and abroad was planned 
for its service to each body and for the common ser- 
vice of the interests of the Lutheran Church as a 
whole. Since the Lutheran Church bodies themselves 
maintain Boards of Foreign Missions, it was under- 
stood that the field of foreign mission activity was al- 
ready occupied by existing machinery of the Churches. 
Moreover, these boards constitute the trained arm for 
foreign mission work. Under these circumstances 
the National Lutheran Council had no eall or author- 
ization to enter this field. Happily, in consequence of 
the request of the National Lutheran Council that “the 
Foreign Mission Boards of its participating bodies 
appoint representatives to meet for conference, to 


OTHER LUTHERAN BODIES AND AGENCIES 253 


study the entire situation and to try to ascertain the 
present and future condition of various Lutheran mis- 
sions affected by the war,” the Lutheran Foreign Mis- 
sions Conference of America was organized. At its 
meeting in Chicago on January 28, 1920, a constitu- 
tion was adopted including the provision that any 
American Lutheran Mission Board subscribing to the 
constitution and by-laws shall be entitled to member- 
ship. By special provision the National Lutheran 
Council was also granted membership as long as its 
co-operation in the matter of foreign mission relief 
should be required. An immediate division of labor 
was arranged between the Lutheran Foreign Missions 
Conference of America and the National Lutheran 
Council. To the former, as a commission of foreign 
mission experts, was committed the task of studying 
the conditions and needs of distressed or orphaned 
' foreign missions, the consideration of appeals for aid, 
the presentation of approved budgets for financial as- 
sistance, the procuring of men to serve as missionaries 
or commissioners to visit isolated mission fields, the 
necessary administrative oversight. To the National 
Lutheran Council was committed the responsibility 
for the representation of the interests of the Luth- 
eran Church in the matter of foreign missions in re- 
lation to governments, the Versailles Peace Confer- 
ence and the European Lutheran missionary societies, 
whose mission fields were in jeopardy. By agreement 
it also became the duty of the Council to conduct ap- 
peals to the churches for funds for foreign mission 
relief and to disburse them to the missions placed by 
recommendation of the Lutheran Foreign Missions 
Conference upon the budget for each year. It became 


254 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


the function of the Lutheran Foreign Missions Con- 
ference to initiate a plan; that of the National Luth- 
eran Council to serve as executive. With common de- 
votion to the great task of conserving these endan- 
gered Lutheran foreign missions to the Church, the 
Lutheran Foreign Missions Conference and the Na- 
tional Lutheran Council have labored together with 
remarkable sympathy and harmony. With God’s 
blessing, this simple method of organization has issued 
in effective action. 

The National Lutheran Council pushed promptly 
with energy the work of representation with a view 
to the conservation of distressed Lutheran foreign 
missions in an orderly way in relation to all interested 
parties. Representations were made through the State 
Department to the Peace Conference in progress in 
Paris. A commissioner was sent to the meeting of 
the Committee of the World Alliance for Promoting 
International Friendship through the Church at The 
Hague, September 30 to October 3, 1919, when the 
following important declaration was made: ‘‘Freedom 
to carry the gospel of Christ to all nations is essential 
to the life of the Christian Church and is one of the 
fundamental claims of religious liberty.” At this 
meeting the commissioner of the Council called to- 
gether representatives of the missionary societies of 
Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Germany to 
counsel in regard to the extent of the foreign mission 
relief problem and Lutheran forces for its solution. 
Personal relationships were formed here which have 
become more and more fruitful through succeeding 
years. The fact that the Versailles Peace Treaty in- 
cluded a provision to the effect that the properties of 


OTHER LUTHERAN BODIES AND AGENCIES 255 


all German missions shall continue to be used for mis- 
sionary purposes and to be held in trust by Boards of 
Trustees appointed by the governments under whose 
jurisdiction the particular mission may come, has 
proved to be of fundamental importance, especially 
since the entire article on this subject has been con- 
strued to carry the principle that boards or societies 
of the same confession shall have the first right to 
occupy temporarily these foreign fields. It was nec- 
essary for the National Lutheran Council by corre- 
spondence and personal representation to establish 
sympathetic contacts with the European societies 
whose foreign mission fields were endangered in con- 
sequence of the war. It was also necessary in like 
manner to establish direct contacts with the mission 
fields themselves. Colonial governments, trustees or 
missionaries in charge of Lutheran missions in India, 
China and Africa, the home societies, and all others’ 
concerned must needs be brought to an understanding 
of the provision of the Peace Treaty, as well as of the 
principles of the Christian religion involved, in order 
that the way might be opened for the Lutherans of 
America to rescue these distressed missions and pre- 
serve them to the Church. At a certain critical mo- 
ment, for example, a cablegram was forwarded to the 
authorities of the British government in India guar- 
anteeing that the requisite men and money would be 
provided by the Lutherans of America for the adminis- 
tration and maintenance of the Gossner mission. Sim- 
ilarly necessary negotiations arranging for the sup- 
port of other Lutheran missions were carried forward 
to a successful conclusion with the important assist- 
ance of the International Missionary Council. When 


256 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


all questions touching the relationships of distressed 
missions and their support were settled, there arose 
the further diplomatic problem of securing action per- 
mitting the return of the European societies and their 
missionaries to the fields which they had founded and 
developed by the sacrifice of prayer, men and money 
throughout the years. To fields in Africa and China, 
German missionaries may now return, and there are 
reasons to believe that within a few months they 
may also re-enter their great fields in India. 

When, as a result of the study and negotiation in- 
dicated above, the facts showing the enormous task of 
foreign mission conservation were ascertained, it ap- 
peared that there were two possible methods of pro- 
viding for the care of these distressed missions: (1) 
for individual Foreign Mission Boards to undertake 
temporarily their control and support; (2) for the 
‘National Lutheran Council as an agency of the par- 
ticipating Lutheran Church bodies, on the recom- 
mendation of the Lutheran Foreign Missions Confer- 
ence of America, to undertake the great work of pro- 
viding for them until the founding societies should be 
able to resume their control and support. 

Under the first plan the field of the Hermannsburg 
Society in India was taken over promptly for control 
and support by the Joint Synod of Ohio, that of the 
Breklum Society in India by the United Lutheran 
Church, those of the Neuendettelsau and Rhenish So- 
cieties in New Guinea by the Iowa Synod, which also © 
gave emergency relief to the Leipsic mission in East 
Africa. In recent years the Augustana Synod under 
a special agreement undertook the complete control 
and support, under the Board of Trustees created by 


OTHER LUTHERAN BODIES AND AGENCIES 257 


the government concerned, of the East African field 
of the Leipsic Society. In the year 1924 the United 
Lutheran Church in America purchased the North 
China mission of the Berlin Society. In the years im- 
mediately following the war the Church of Sweden 
Mission assumed responsibility for the India field of 
the Leipsic Society. The story of the rallying of these 
individual church bodies for the task of foreign mis- 
sion conservation with the consequent devotion and 
sacrifice of their people for the common task is full 
of inspiration; but the space is not available for the 
telling of it here at length. 

For various reasons it was not possible to place 
many of these orphaned missions under the temporary 
care of the mission boards of particular church bodies. 
It therefore became the responsibility of the Luth- 
erans of America in many church bodies to provide for 
them through the agency of the National Lutheran 
Council on the recommendation of their missionary 
experts functioning through the Lutheran Foreign 
Missions Conference. The following table indicates 
that occasionally or regularly the National Lutheran 
Council has contributed by loans or gifts for the pres- 
ervation of the distressed missions of nine mission- 
ary societies to date, the total amount of $556,879.01. 

The chapels, churches, schools and other property 
of these missions and hundreds of thousands of native 
Christians by this work of foreign mission relief have 
been preserved to the cause of Christian missions and 
to the Lutheran Church. As political and economic 
conditions render it possible, the Lutheran foreign 
mission societies of Germany and Finland are grad- 
ually resuming the support of their own foreign mis- 


258 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


sion work. God has richly blessed these efforts of the 
Lutheran Churches of America to preserve these great 
outposts of the Lutheran Churches of Europe in non- 
Christian lands. The task is not yet complete, but 
God is abundantly able to move the people of His 
Church to finish the work that He has enabled them 
thus far to carry on with such abundant success. 


259 


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261 


DERE GTO YY Oke (VA a Cages 
LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSION 
BOARDS AND SOCIETIES 


1. United Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 

(1892). 

Chairman of the Japan Committee: Rev. V. W. Bondo, 
3319 Washington Avenue, Racine, Wis. 

Official Periodicals: Boernebladet, Our Lutheran 
Youth. 

Fields: Asia-Japan, in co-operation with the United 
Lutheran Church in America. North America- 
United States, among North American Indians in 
Oklahoma. 


2. Indian Commission of the Evangelical Lutheran Joint 
Synod of Wisconsin and other States (1893). 
Secretary: Rev. J. Gauss, Jenera, Ohio. 

Official Periodicals: Evangelisch Lutherisches Gemetin- 
deblatt, Northwestern Lutheran. 
Field: United States, Apache Indians. 


38. Board of Foreign Missions of the Evangelical Lutheran 
Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States (1893). 
General Secretary: Rev. Frederick Brand, 3316 South 
Jefferson Avenue, St. Louis, Mo. 

Official Periodicals: Der Lutheraner, Lutheran Wit- 
ness. | 

Fields: Asia-China, Hupeh. India, Madras. 


4. Board of Home Missions in Foreign Countries of the 
Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and 
Other States (1908). 
Chairman: Rev. E. G. Jehn, 3650 South Honore Street, 
Chicago, Ill. 


262 


DIRECTORY 263 


Correspondent for South America: Rev. August Burg- 
dorf, 2546 Cortez Street, Chicago, IIl. 

Field: South America, Brazil. Also work in Argen- 
tina, Australia and Europe. 


5. Board of Indian Missions of the Evangelical Lutheran 
Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States. 
Secretary: Rev. George F. Fierke, Box 171, Witten- 
berg, Wis. 
Field: United States, North American Indians. 


6. Lutheran Board of Missions of the Lutheran Free Church 

(1893). 

Secretary: Rev. Johan Mattson, Augsburg Seminary, 
Minneapolis, Minn. 

Official Periodicals: Folkebladet, Lutheran Free 
Church Messenger. 

Fields: Asia—China, Honan. Africa—Madagascar. 

Women’s Missionary Federation of the Lutheran Free 
Church (1916). 

Office: 1511 East Thirty-fifth Street, Minneapolis, 
Minn. 


7. Board of Missions of the Church of the Lutheran Breth- 
ren (1905). 
Secretary: Rev. E. H. Gunhus, 2422 Thirty-fifth Ave- 
nue, South, Minneapolis, Minn. 
Official Periodical: Broderbaandet. 
Fields: Asia—China, Honan and Hupeh. Africa— 
French Sudan, Nigeria. 


8 Inter-synodical Evangelical Lutheran Orient Mission So- 
ciety (1910). 
Executive Secretary: Rev. N. J. Lohre, 425 4th St. 
So., Minneapolis, Minn. 
Official Periodical: Kurdistan Missionary. 


9. Board of Foreign Mission of the Evangelical Lutheran 
Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States (1912). 
Secretary: Rev. J. H. Schneider, 383 Thurman Avenue, 

Columbus, Ohio. 


264 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Official Periodicals: Kirchenzeitung, Lutheran Youth, 
The Lutheran Standard. 
Field: India, Madras Presidency. 


10. Board of Foreign Missions of the Evangelical Lutheran 
Synod of Iowa and Other States (1917). 
Secretary: Rev. W. Kraushaar, Aberdeen, S. D. 
Official Periodicals: Lutheran Missionary, Die Mis- 
sionsstunde. 
Field: Australia—Melanesia (New Guinea). 
Mission Auxiliary 
Secretary: Rev. J. G. Baermann, Palmer, Ia. 


11. Board of Foreign Missions of the Norwegian Lutheran 

Church of America (1917). 

Secretaries: Rev. J. R. Birkelund, M. D., and Rev. M. 
Saterlie, 425 South Fourth Street, Minneapolis, 
Minn. 

Official Periodicals: Lutheran Church Herald, Luther- 
aneren. 

Fields: Asia—China, Honan, Hupeh, Shantung. 
Africa—Union of South Africa (Natal), Mad- 
agascar. 

Women’s Missionary Federation of the Norwegian 
Lutheran Church of America (1917). 

Corresponding Secretary: Mrs. Edward Johnson, 
120 Van Brunt Street, Mankato, Minn. 


12. Board of Home Missions and Church Extension of the 
Norwegian Lutheran Church of America (1917). 
Executive Secretary: Rev. C. S. B. Hoel, 425 Fourth 

Street, South, Minneapolis, Minn. 
Fields: Alaska, North American Indians and Eskimos. 
United States, North American Indians. 


138. Board of Foreign Missions of the United Lutheran 
Church in America (1918). 
General Secretaries: Rev. George Drach, D.D., and 
Rev. Luther B. Wolf, D.D. 


DIRECTORY 265 


Office: 18 East Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, Md. 
Official Periodicals: The Foreign Missionary, Der Mis- 
sionsbote, The Lutheran, Lutherischer Herold. 
Fields: Asia—Japan; India, Madras Presidency; 
China, Shantung. Africa—Liberia. South Amer- 
ica—British Guiana, Argentina. 
Women’s Missionary Society of the United 
Lutheran Church in America (1920). 
Executive Secretary: Miss Amelia D. Kemp, 1228 
Fulton Building, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
Official Periodical: Lutheran Woman’s Work. 


14. Society for Lutheran Missions in Russia (1919). 
Secretary: Rev. J. G. Hultkrans, 2449 Fremont Ave- 
nue, North, Minneapolis, Minn. 
Field: Alaska, Little Diomede Island. 


15. Board of Foreign Missions of the Augustana Synod 
(1923). 
Secretary: Rev. A. F. Almer, D.D., Bethesda Hospital, 
Ninth and Wacouta Streets, St. Paul, Minn. 
Field Secretary: Rev. Fred W. Wyman, 4627 Stevens 
Avenue, South, Minneapolis, Minn. 
Periodical: The Augustana Foreign Missionary. 
Fields: Asia—China, Honan, Hupeh. Africa—Tanga- 
nyika Territory. India in co-operation with 
United Lutheran Church. 
Women’s Missionary Society of the Augustana 
Synod 
Executive Secretary: Miss Alice Johnson, 1247 
East Forty-sixth Street, Chicago, Ill. 
Periodical: Missions Tiding. 
16. Board of Indian Missions of the Evangelical Lutheran 
Church of America—Hilsen’s Synod. 
Chairman: Mr. N. T. Peterson, Taylor, Wis. 
Official Periodical: Den Kristelige Laegmand. 
Field: United States, American Indians. 


17. Santal Mission American Committee (1891). 
Secretary: Rev. Prof. J. H. Blegen, Augsburg Sem- 
inary, Minneapolis, Minn. 


266 


18. 


19. 


20. 


OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Official Periodical: Santalmissionaeren. 

Field: Asia—India. 

Sudan Mission. 

Corresponding Secretary: Rev. M. W. Halverson, 
Beloit, Wis. 

Field: Equatorial Africa, French Cameroon. 

The National Lutheran Council, (1918). Has furnished 
funds for the preservation of European Lutheran for- 
eign missions. 

Executive Director: Rev. J. A. Morehead, D.D., 437 
Fifth Avenue, New York City. 

The Lutheran Foreign Missions Conference of America 
(1919). 

Annual meeting of representatives of American Luth- 
eran Foreign Mission Boards on the first Wednes- 
day of February. 

Officers: President, Rev. G. A. Brandelle, D.D.; Vice- 
President, Rev. Johan Mattson; Secretary, Rev. 
George Drach D.D.; Treasurer, Rev. J. H. 
Schneider. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


FOREIGN MISSIONARY MAGAZINES 
ENGLISH: 


The Foreign Missionary, monthly, United Lutheran Church. 

Lutheran Woman’s Work, monthly, United Lutheran 
Women’s Missionary Society. | 

The Lutheran Missionary, monthly, Synod of Iowa. 

The Lutheran Pioneer, monthly, Missouri Synod. 

The Kurdistan Missionary, monthly, Orient Mission 
Society. 

The Augustana Foreign Missionary, monthly, Augustana 
Synod. 


GERMAN: 
Der Missionsbote, monthly, United Lutheran Church. 
Die Missionsstunde, monthly, Synod of Iowa. 
SWEDISH: 


Kina Missionaren, monthly, Augustana Synod. 

Missions Tiding, monthly, Augustana Women’s Mission- 
ary Society. 

The Augustana Foreign Missionary, monthly, Augustana 
Synod. 


NORWEGIAN: 
Santal Missionaren, monthly, Santal Missionary Society. 


BOOKS 
ONLY LUTHERAN AUTHORS LISTED 


CRONK, Katharine Scherer. Brave Adventurers. 1925. 
Women’s Missionary Society, United Lutheran Pub- 
lication House, Philadelphia, Pa.................cccccssscsssccceees $ .75 


267 


268 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


DRACH, George, and Kupmr, C. F. The Telugu Mission. 
1914. United Lutheran Publication House, Phila- 
Clalr bias WP any iiisohsvedicgeses de sevcscauscowoscavaseurcs ge treteoitene nenuaneanamntee 

DrAcH, George. Forces in Foreign Missions. 1925. 
United Lutheran Publication House, Philadelphia, Pa. 

Foss, C. W. Glimpses of Three Continents. Augustana 
Book Concern, Rock Island, Ill. 1912............ DLeeseeejadators 

Goupes, C. B. Christian Frederick Schwartz. 1922. 
Lutheran Book Concern, Columbus, Ohio ................s00008 

KEISER, A. Lutheran Mission Work Among the Amer- 
ican Indians. Augsburg Publishing House, Minneap- 
OLIS Se ITM WL OOS oie il ecdean souks aeedoavenpatecesd teuteees etcataer a ame 

LAuURY, Preston A. A History of Lutheran Mission 
1905. Second edition. Pilger Publishing House, 
VS7cr Teh b Ab gid of: RIN CHU ee ERE RUINE Pan OURO MoD My uipn ate WORE) J og Or 

LEWARS, Elsie Singmaster. The Story of Lutheran Mis- 
sions, 1917. Women’s Missionary Society, United 
Lutheran Publication House, Philadelphia, Pa............. 

LIPPARD, Emma Gerberding. Leaves from a Japanese 
Calendar. 1924. Women’s Missionary Society, 
United Lutheran Publication House, Philadelphia, Pa 

LUNDEEN, Anton. In the Hands of Bandits. Augustana 

- Book Concern, Rock Island, Tb. ..............ccccssessesccsceeesees 

Our First Decade in China. Augustana Book Concern, 
FLOCIE PUSLANIG ) Lilcslascsctecsecssceilessneshey cvccpocczesea sha sateas suas maeesaaaee 

PFEIFFER, Edward. Mission Studies. History and Prin- 
ciples. Third edition. 1920. Lutheran Book Con- 


corm, i Colymbiay Oo Auisssschacvesavecps cocgeeeuetentahoran cite reet Emma 
PFEIFFER, Edward. Missionary Stories for Juniors. 
1925. Lutheran Book Concern, Columbus, O. ............ 
SATERLIE, M. Foreign Missions in the Bible. Augsburg 
Publishing House, Minneapolis, Minn. ..........cccccceceeeees 
SCHNEIDER, J. H. Hans Egede. 1923. Lutheran Book 
Concern, Coltambag) Qe sci sacensuloor seas tedsed eedbrape then teaeeaneaee 
ScHuH, H. J. David Zeisberger. 1923. Lutheran Book 
Concern, Columbus; Oss aiiii ts cca ak ct iiscnenetsaeeaeiaee 


SEEBACH, Margaret R. Other People’s Children. 1920. 
United Lutheran Publication House, Philadelphia, 
Pais: sdaccssaatschuataneiedvcwes pee Lasnesavdd deddakonns conddapecedeeemneescistaet an anna 


1.00 


1.25 


50 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 269 


SEEBACH, Margaret R. Marigold Horse. Women’s Mis- 
sionary Society, United Lutheran Publication House, 


CELTIC EG ehh OU af RS UE SR SAT AIDA CE i ei Li ELC nN BO DDR $1.25 
SHEATSLEY, C. V. Our Mission Field in India. 1921. 
Lutheran Book Concern, Columbus, O. ..........cescseseee 50 


White Unto Harvest. China Mission. Norwegian Luth- 
eran Church. Board of Foreign Missions (1919), 
BPETETIGO OLNS RIVE SINT Cy eee eeepc ica etaies idasets basedecseccuscatsoctbese 1.00 
WHITE, Ralph J. Six Years in Hammock Land. Our 
British Guiana Mission Field. 1928. United Luth- 
eran Publication House, Philadelphia, Pa. ................ HAW 


PAMPHLETS 

ENGLISH: 

Annual Report of the Foreign Missions of the United 
Lutheran Church in America. The Lutheran Foreign 
Missions House, 18 East Mt. Vernon Place, Balti- 
BTEC Ry ct eca vs srece rede ta teets seleeesrestsdormtatiaavetvecporsvacace cntuandge Free 

Annual Report, English and Norwegian, of the Foreign 
Missions of the Norwegian Lutheran Church of 


PAMPER OE er Gree ccecagsentcocecce sdenaatocadackveskexeveselectostonshassanesseadesosdee Free 
Tanganyika, Our Opportunity. Augustana Foreign Mis- 
RT sot ty aac) ce dacnssaloastvbuesesedanvace yesh coens cds ea oaanacenbeas’ $ .10 
Our Mission in Honan, China. Augustana Synod............+. Free 
The Augustana Synod Across the Seas. Augustana 
ERE MAMEE RCL ESUEYANG.  ugced cay dp sive ohsbevaceenes ¥ansercebsohel cote dueansssaeteasansss Free 
Come Over and Help Us. Augustana Synod ........ccccceees Free 
What You Should Know About the Augustana Foreign 
Migsionse, Augtstana Syd \..s.ssssessejeotscoadesscsoonesseseasee 10 
India Booklet. Women’s Missionary Society, U. L. C. 
RAMEN VLD PU Ce Le Laee tats anes adtie nak eran dade uhersaeeenbverecbens 25 
Japan Booklet. Women’s Missionary Society, U. L. C. 
MNSRPCLCSITI TDSC EA a! au hes osaees sodtcdscsven co ceddant edonechse detcoatenesaseyee sents 15 
Liberia Booklet. Women’s Missionary Society, U. L. C. 
PASE EACLORUY TTA UNE Elo! Wok piv cwc ace WA cancca oes aaeaccesades dante riage cba ecedeebeahes 15 


South America Booklet. Women’s Missionary Society, 
Bereta re R TITAC GI NIG. 7A. py dasccackcsedovwsosbaverccecceevsses cess 15 


270 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Hinduism. Rosalyn S. Sease. Women’s Missionary So- 


ciety; (Use CiiPhiladelphiagh ani Ans akensiemeteavenes $.05 
Buddhism. Rosalyn S. Sease. Women’s Missionary So- 

sionary Society, U. L. C. Philadelphia, Pa. ................ .05 
The Hope of Islam. Caroline E. Young. Women’s Mis- 

sionary Society, U. L. C., Philadelphia, Pa...............0 05 
Anna S. Kugler, M.D., Women’s Missionary Society, 

Una Philadelphia. Pa siiisintccatintaccteea nee .05 
David A. Day. Women’s Missionary Society, U. L. C. 

PRITAM eas PP iieiecds scebevenven coageadeaaeesoabitwecwei sch asnettkeeteetels .05 
Bartholomew Ziegenbalg. Women’s Missionary Society, 

UT Co ePhiladelphigs: Pacis io isscaegisceceeiaep ree enee .05 
Christian Frederick Schwartz. Women’s Missionary So- 

ciety; Us. Os) Philadelphia; \ Pao ae eens 05 
The New Guinea Mission Our Sacred Trust. Mission 

Auxiliary; Synod of! Towa iii ia scesemtemeetenete 10 
Brands Plucked Out of the Fire. Mission Auxiliary, 

SV NOM OL OWA > 605i shicecevockveldesthopbsuesastedasceay tatustersebene akavameane 10 
Sowing and Reaping Among the Azeras. Mission Aux- 

ary. Synod: of Towa i. wi.iectaienesuyemieenenes 10 
Short Stories for Children. Mission Auxiliary, Synod 

WE GLO WG ices cee boanceh cvaccudahess cues hu sdceptovechaneed tat ce eentsoak ean naianenm 10 
Our Synod at Work in India. Joint Synod of Ohio............ Free 
Our Mission in India. Joint Synod of Ohio................sese0e .06 
A Girls’ School in China. Martha Kulberg. Augsburg 

Publishing House, Minneapolis, Minn. ..............scceceeee 15 


Program Manual for Training Schools and Societies. 
Women’s Missionary Federation, Norwegian Luth- 
eran Church of America, 425 South Fourth Street, 


Minneanolisy Alinin sihisticececoghis cases sacdavestaceccaccetuns haaemae namie 25 
PAMPHLETS 
GERMAN: 
Bilder aus dem papuanischen Heidentum. Mission Aux- 
Wary, 4s SYNOG, OL) LOW ic icnciciocevscbencasonadlulll elt tet coketedeae ae $ .10 


Ankunft und Anfangseindruecke in New Guinea. Mis- 
sion); Auxiliary, Synod. of Towa iis dccsisvevateetceaes 10 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 271 


Bai, der Zauberer. Mission Auxiliary, Synod of Iowa........ $.10 
Sane, der letzte Wasahaeuptling. Mission Auxiliary, 
Cs ER bed Toe” anid ROU Dc ne te atin he DA aeRO he OL APR) OR PR 10 
Sungangny, ein Grosser unter den New Guinea-Christen. 
BHIBEION DAURINAT YY (OVNOG) O17 LO WA Wietcivescccivicnccdgieocoosce 10 
Jahrbuch der Ev. Luth. Mission in New Guinea. Wart- 
burg Publishing House, Synod of Towa ..............scseseeees .30 
MAPS 


Maps of the Guntur and Rajahmundry, India, mission 
fields of the United Lutheran Church. The Lutheran 
Foreign Missions House, 18 East Mt. Vernon Place, 
PEMLUAPIFOT Ar VTGhew re Cel uteri her) drei ce ap a chcdasavovonebucesvescevasnecavnass Free 

Outline Map of the World and Outline Map of North 
America on paper of strong texture, size 35 by 44 
inches. Women’s Missionary Society, United Luth- 
eran Publication House, Philadelphia, Pa..............00 $ .30 

Map of India and Ceylon (showing mission stations of 
North American Missionary Societies), size 37 by 
47 inches. Women’s Missionary Society, United Luth- 
eran Publication House, Philadelphia, Pa.............ssses0 .60 

Outline Map of India and Burma, size 25 by 30 inches. 
Women’s Missionary Society, United Lutheran Pub- 
Pema PTOUSe,, PHUadelphia, ! Pa. :s..cecsesccsscecessecaresvecssoees 30 

Outline Maps of China, South America, Africa, size 28 
by 32 inches. Women’s Missionary Society. United 
Lutheran Publication House, Philadelphia, Pa............. .30 

Maps of India, Africa, Japan. Size 35 by 44 inches. Each 
map shows the Lutheran stations of Lutheran mis- 
sionary societies in Europe and the United States. 
Women’s Missionary Society, United Lutheran Pub- 
lication’ House, Philadelphia, Pa...c.cs....ccccccrssssssseessveses 70 

Map of India Mission field of the Joint Synod of Ohio. 

Size 32 by 42 inches. Cloth backed. Lutheran Book 
RELY. COLITIS, CPTI ed dnceectnsdennsestevacs sdiectsabacepestese aces 2.00 

Map of New Guinea mission field of the Synod of Iowa. 

Size 18 by 21 inches. Wartburg Publishing House, 
CL LLL Ua 11, ts don cavcunesthdionteadecteosne cates te udebaresklentssvcaconvone 15 


272 OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


Map of New Guinea mission field of the Synod of Iowa. 
Size 29% by 35 inches. Wartburg Publishing House, 
Chieago, (TE) eee sl Norn nae tener teucaet ewan ted $.75 
Atlas. A geographical survey of the former fields of the 
Rheinisch (Barmen) and Neuendettelsau societies by 
Prof. G. J. Fritschel, D.D., 7 maps. Wartburg Pub- 
lishing. “House, ‘Ghicago, Eb. si.ccicyeskedescacck Nesvedasapascasbaterss 1.25 
The China Mission Field, with an inset map of China, size 
82 by 44 inches, in colors, cloth back, on rollers, pub- 
lished by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Nor- 
wegian Lutheran Church of America, Minneapolis, 
MAR a ielees SiR cesdccwvesel tadetebedacathceauitadasvabhecbtebielcks ets et ho man amnee 2.00 
Map of China, Madagascar and South Africa. Each map 
shows the stations of the Norwegian Lutheran 
Church. Board of Foreign Missions, Minneapolis, 
WEED TI Eh i ots sicdsectcens vetoes vocsedeedaie vena toneusntereieenvtcelsdsce tell ies a aentnaes Free 


PAGEANTS AND PANTOMIMES 


Published by the Women’s Missionary Society, 
United Lutheran Publication House, Phila., Pa. 


Hanging a Sign, 15 cents, 6 for 50 cents, 75 cents dozen. A 
presentation of Medical Missions. Time, 25 minutes. Nine 
participants 

Waiting for the Doctor, 5 cents, 50 cents dozen. A Medical 
Mission. dialogue for eight juniors or older girls. 

The Search for the Light, 25 cents. Pageant. A man’s quest 
for God. Time, about 60 minutes. Cast from 117 to 277 
participants. 

The Way, 15 cents, 6 for 75 cents. A Pageant of Japan. For 
small cast, 40 participants, or 83 for large cast. Time, 25 
to 80 minutes. 

Japanese Costumes and Decorations, 10 cents. 

The Way of Peace, 25 cents. Pageant to show that peace can 
come to the world. Cast, 70 or more participants. 


INDEX 


PAGE 
PEST LTO: ics eisseessskeiess saducenons 38 
PPT SS IA» fel seseevactsibdovediaveyien 12.2) 


Adolphus, Michael Gustavus.. 12 
Piricay SOU aus 9,110 
Albrecht, Georgevehini a 38 
All-India Lutheran Confer- 
ence 55 
American Board of Commis- 


SOSH RET EO SESS EET ESOS ES ODSOTOSTED SSIS UOO® 


SOHO Sey ae, 
Andhra Christian College, 

i 1: Rea A A RELA i ee PRIN 
PAT PCRIRIINS, © Letscigctelcsckeiuccroecedcens 96-98 
Atlas, World’s Missionary .... 12 
Augsburg Seminary ............... 222 
Augustana Students’ Mission- 

PR OOCIELY. claire, sdcatacese 178 


Augustana Reds Missions, 
69, 157, 168, 180ff. 
Augustana Weed Mission 


[2a 7 bole e iPaieg io 170, 176, 186 
Augustana Women’s Mission- 

BEI CISEM Ics escolissedsesscoenecnns 178 
Australian Lutheran Church 214 
PASM OCECET | cldsscvveacetcessscoecetecs 19 
Becicet Allee 1 O).- cccsesstecascevenss 38 
PERE FOIA 1, sasosenschuqocas epodseed 36 


Berlin Missionary Society 19, 99 
Birkelund, J. R 138 


© PARE ee eeoeroseresese 


Boards, American Lutheran 
Foreign, beginnings of .22, 102 
Boggs, Miss Kate ..........ccssecoee 39 
TROLERDSOT, EL Fiat teceescennse 20, 243 
Branelles oG. . Aji .kisssecseass 184 ff. 
Brethren, Lutheran .............. 247 
DERE ORAL E accor tecegchere cage ecntys 39 
PAT RUM x ULI ©) finsoine-s oars atcescante 98 


Brotherhood, United Luth- 
eran Church 


PAGE 

Brown, ChasioBuycu... 83, 86, 103 
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 
MAZES We eon et Slee co ae 9 

Campanius Rey. John ............ 22 

eae Verdi VWALITAINY ti ccesiv rates vazlorcocshes 18 


Catechism, Luther’s Small, 
LGsiee, toe: 92, 151 
Catholics, Roman, in India... 45 
Central Missionary Society, 
General Synod  ......cccccsssssecese 
Ghairs) of Missions) isc cts 135 
China, Augustana Synod, 
Mission 18 
China, Lutheran Free Church, 
Mission 28 
China, Missouri Synod, Mis- 


Caf la Weis bial bls NEUES! Sik gD) LE 239 
China Mission Society ........... 128 
China, Norwegian Lutheran 

Church, Mission .......... 
China, United Lutheran 

Church, Mission’ .............. 99 ff 
China, Lutheran Church of, 

154, 175 


Christian VI, King of Den- 


ee hy abhor ie LE LE dps AER ES 17 
Church Missionary Society, 

SUA et sea tecicctese , 34, 
College, Guntur, India ............ 38 
Colony of Mercy, Kumamo- 

Teva ALL otis eat hniennocs ev yteecses 89 
Copenhagen in-cecreee 1S Ie 20 


Council, India Mission, of the 
United Lutheran Church.... 56 


Danish Evangelical Lutheran 
Church 


SETA O OH EEE E TOE HEHE O OEE ETHD HOOD 


274 


PAGE 
Danish Church, United .... 25, 91 
Danish-Halle Mission, ee 


’ 


Danish Missionary Society... 20 


Day, David A. and Emma 
He Apo UL CSIR GUT 78ff. 
Department of Mission Work, 
phate CE ge ON CT al ee UME ol 
Dober it eonhard ick ou ieteciss 
Drach, George ......... 4, 103, 104 
PE MANO RAN GOT iiuovstivcsscesdeeess 
BAGEC He ctiiatid Vee oe ticle teats 12 
Rarthanake Japan sac 3 
Bast sindial Company) isc 
Educational Work, India.. 62, és 
MUAWILIG RCN WV Ci cetecseeater ties 161, 172 
DOUG PLANTS Tow vrccpraticetcscheccoestone 17 
RE RICLER Nt yori seme s uae cyepiae 17 


Evangeliska Fosterlands 
Stiftelsen 


SOROS CO SEES SEL ORES ESSE OTHE OSES 


Ewald, Emmy, Girls’ 
Schoen asses cuss 168, 177, 179 
Wanhs AC @tnerine tive ea 
Paneer to nina vitsscustuece 132 
Fields, American Lutheran 
GE Ee Fe blo LE SIN an CR AI eo 


Finland, Church Missionary 
SCH OS cctv tanan cp ecsusbasecs 
Finland, Lutheran Evangeli- 


Cal (ASROCIQUON |.) ctr cce css Ze 
Finschhafen, New Guinea.... 203 
PHI CLIStrOeM, EL | atetesccicestuesness 17 
Flierl, Johannes .........c000 203 ff. 


Foreign Missions aria 
Cntheran (e004 i | is 
USP eh a she Dy y hyo) shhs Wager muir Chesaon ye 
BOSS UT ITs cole shih ocsaecnenes DAS 
Francke, August Hermann 13, 16 
Frederick IV, King ............ 2 
ae BE aia Lutheran, Mis- 
FN IR 40) 088 WILLS, le 221ff. 
Friends of Augsburg ............ 229 
Functioning of India Mission 
Of UL ALG 5 


SCO eR ewer ereerereneereree 


OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


PAGE 

General Council.... 24, 38, 90, 102 
General Secretaries, U. i. GC 

Board ee ea a 103 
General Synod, ee aR 


Societies ve Boar 
Reef 24, oe 74, 102 


George I, al AUREL He Les 15 
German Missions  .........ccsss0see 25 
Girls’) Schools."India ia 63 
Girls’ ‘School, ' Japan ‘csdJcsccscess 89 
Girls’ School, Liberia ............ 82 
Gold Coast, jal ucanuacmence ees 20 
“Gospel Witness, The’ .......... 55 


Gossner Missionary Society.... 20 


Gossner Church in India... “66, 71 
Greenland, Mission to ........0. 17 
Groenning, Chas. Wm. .... 31, 33 
Gruendler, | Karl’ 3s: otk ae 15 
Gruétzlaff,\ Karl ptt nf 
Gunn; Walter th ccc eee 
Guntur, India.... 30, 37, 46, 57, 7 
Halle Institution 420i. 14, 16 
Hankow, China 129, 153, 177, 239 
Hatms, Lous icin. 0, 34, 192 
Harpster) John H. ..2. S700 
Harris; (Roy Gi eee tee 38 
Hasselquist Boys’ School, 
hina Oe a ea 168, 176 


Hauge Synod Mission....130, Be 
Heiling:)./ Peter: <icussuteviee eee 
Heise, Ferdinand August....31, 34 


Hermannsburg Missionary 
SOCIELY | Sule ae 
Hermannsburg Mission, India 
34, 190 
Heyer, Christian Frederick, 
23; 2A the oe 
Hogstad. | eh s atbiee 117, 223 
Holland, Robert Cy .............. 103 
Home and Agency, Hankow, 
Chania, ol, nacstnaeoieaeiae 153ff., 177 


Honan Province, China.. 167, 229 


Hospitals, India 0... 67, 69 
Hsiichow, “China .....2ie.Agg 166 
Hult: Kaloh gcse 181ff. 


INDEX 


Reliance « Synod) iAviissesncseee 25 
Immanuel Synod of Austra- 
PE Maer SAE AS 202, 214 
India The? Lure cot i.e. 42ff. 
Industrial, India, Mission........ 66 
Iowa Synod Mission .... 24, 201ff. 
Inter-Mission Schools, India, 


63, 64 
MMOIIEMe) FOL voce scuscle luis 19 
Japan, Mission im o.........c000 85ff. 
Jeypore Field, India. ............ 70 
Bevervanden yt ree rick 18 


Ki Kung Shan American 
scnool): China: 210139/152.177 


Kindergartens in Japan ........ 94 
Pease, LGA alkek ccaertucerens 192 
righnapire, “india ig 233 
LRTI 10E RIED SPARSE yy Pel Uae BEL aed 40 
Kugler, Anna ‘S., M.D.....::39, 67 
Kumamoto, Japan Weal Tol 4 ORS 86 
Kurds, hia eeu Mee nes Ulan 245 
Kwangchow, NST ie eh araale an 139ff. 
Kyushu Gakuin, Japan. .......... .. 88 
Lace-Making, India .............0 6 
Drath Reel Wie) ics snonestecs 144, 162 
Lapps, Mission to ........0+ 217 
URE aTET eel us lec etiocovaaeos 111 
Larsen, N. Astrup .....sccvove 155 
pO EU ESE Ra a game Toa aD 11 
Leipsic Society ........ 20, 184, 233 
Leonard, Sara peta ter Votecen\sbostate 81 
PCR se Sasievocece 20; ALi 
Ue aay Ae id RR ee 90 


London Missionary Society..18, 19 
Luetkens, Dr. 13 
Lutheran Board of Missions 230 
Lutheran Church in America, 
Foreign Missions of....6, 25, 26 
Lutheran Church, China..154, 175 


Pee ePIC eer) 


Lutheran College, Honan, 
MRITEINA AB uetocttassectadoeskecesenssscaseree 

Madagascar ............ 112ff., 223ff. 

Magazines, Missionary ........ 104 


275 

PAGE 

IE ATC INET hacer ite aes ateuseu tie deteate 20 
Medical Mission Work, 
AA's Fok Pia Hein Al ude 5 TUCO? nope si 
Ministerium of  Pennsyl- 

PLELTeh tess usec sae tng lenses ces 9, 35 

Missionaries, number of.... 11, 12 
Mission Stations, Guntur, 
SRF: Cais CNC Es RCI Sto hy 
Missouri, Synod of, Mis- 

SHENG ect as iatdedees colic sh esas 232ff. 

Mittelholzer Fi RU) Va siscesesens 97 

Monroe s Susan bi cok 41 


Moravian Church Missions.... 17 
Mueller, Dr. and Mrs. E. H... 96 
Mylius, August «ccc 34, 192 


Natal 
National Lutheran Council, 
TASTY BY 185, a 


INGISOr LISTED wise scssacsvoregs 
Netherlands’ Indies  .............. 
Neudoerffer, Ernst .... 42, 65, 70 
Neuendettelsau Missionary 
SOMIGTH ssi aiicl sod cnuoscecceseah 20, 202 
New Amsterdam, British 
bre Cer Gy ia UIC UTe pe Rand ket 98 
New Guinea .....cccsesces 20, 201ff 
Newspaper. Evangelism, 
HERPMANR Rare Lat cee ayer cub auiee gs 92 
Norske Missions Selskap...... 21 
North German Missionary 
SOCIECV Re eur 20a lvoe 
Norwegian Evangelical Luth- 
CAI NV NOM aie litt cadesvtnee 241 


Norwegian Lutheran Church 
in America, 
109ff., ‘112¢f., 141, 149, $03 


Nurses, India Ns Nadtdetie aver testent : 
Officer, Morris) cuba We 
Ohio, Joint Synod, Mission, 
190ff. 
Orient Mission Society ...... 245 
Palnad) \laluk.\ Indian au. ak 32 


Panchamas, India 


276 


PAGE 
Pagans hie ot ec oon Ae 201 ff. 
Rietists .Aserman move 13 
Bluetschag, | “Henry sau las 12 
1510) 2) OUINT SR he Ue pence SRE ica spi) 40 
Porto Rico 24, 158, 180 
PO tISen ay Hage On cuesiieunebees 40 
Printing Press in India .... 14, 66 


Protege Support, System of.. 106 
Puttur, India 192 


So oeseeeeeeocesgreeeseese® 


Rajahmundry, India, 
31, 40, 48, x 


Rask i Gertrude ions yocacises 
Reformation and_ Foreign 
EM CEP Ta ol tkaanantit get tila UU 
Rhenish Missionary Society, a 
, 203 ff. 
Rhentvesmicar la: osu 19, 23 
BRE ter eM eel ee ga 214 
Ronning ya. No se 130, 162 


Russia, Society for Lutheran 
Missions in 


Se eeneosceseveceacceseoess 


Bacnther Mate ys nle suai 41 
Santal Mission, India .... 20, 243 
Saravia, Andrianus CNA haere cc 11 
Saterlie, 1, AG Aare ak Ors el 137 
Scandinavian Missions in 

A TF hog) SpE PUNE ea RUT ade 149 
Schadeenmones (0s ye 41 
Schirneine: von nae eo 19 
Schleswig-Holstein Mission- 

APY AREY. ella 20, 40, 70 
Schmidt, Hans Christian........ 35 
Scholl, George PIN SSL bla 103 
schreuder toh. oS helo 116 
Schreuder Mission  ..........0.+0 109 
Schwartz, Christian Freder- 

ee ahh TU Ln ee CT RAED ee 8 16 
Secretaries, General, U. L. C. 

| ace 14 tA ADA nt Toye CURES ES 103 
Shantung Christian Univer- 

Ritys | Cintra | 0 ee a EY 145 
Shekow, China ................ 150, 174 
Riberiay ie cee ea 248 
Spent ering hs Chat uk 20, 243 


OUR CHURCH ABROAD 


PAGE 


Snyder, William E. ............... 32 

Society for Promotion of 
Christian Knowledge 

Society for the Propagation 
of ;the. Gospel. a 14 


South :. America, (U0. LG 
MISSIONS |e ca eee 95 

South India Evangelical 
Lutheran: ‘Church oi ee 9 

Spener, Philip Jacob ............. 13 


Stach, Christian and Mat- 


th BO1gs i ioisdh cogcls ceva rake 17 
Stokes, Henry, Esq... 30 
Siclees SM wie ce oes 135 
Sudan, Africa! (eg 180ff., 249 
Surinam, South America........ 11 
Svenska Kyrkans Mission...... ra 
Sverdrup, George ........ 

Sweden, Church of, Mission- 

ary Society ssid sSosecsplllepucs See 17 
Swenson, Charlotte  .........cc0 41 
Synodical Conference ............ 232 
Tamil (Bible ee wanaeee 14, 16 
Tanganyika Territory, Au- 

gustana Mission ............ 183 ff. 
sanjore, (India) ees 14, 16 
Telleen, John (.2ulcncne ee 157 
Telugus, They anh Ae ae 46ff. 
Theological Education .... 65, 146 
Thirty. Years’. Ware seenaaiae 10 
Tinnevelli, India ............... 16, 23 
Tokyo. tue Eo oem 88, 93 
Tou irik ta oe ee 226 
Torvilt:! Ga) atesa eee 120 
Tranquebar, India ............ 13, 15 
Travancore, India ............ 234 ff. 
Trivandrum, “India “.24e223 236 

ip site eet | 

Uhl, hemon i La eee 37 

Unangst,, Frias 0 cao aa 34 
United Lutheran Theological 

Seminary, China ............0. 50 


United Danish Church Mis- 


SIOTS | iociiniatstan anderen : 


INDEX 


PAGE 


United Lutheran Church in 
America, Foreign Missions, 
Gey 27th, 6405155,7 70,0 91102 


United Norwegian Church 
Mission in Chima ........ 133ff. 
United Synod in the South 
87, 102 
Reet PUOUIS Te LM ty eccdotictoce 31 
Ay Aced MURS LISLAV US ‘a srasuicasestelocuieacterss 12 
Vellore Medical School, In- 
RILAME RRC Or eA an ene 68 


Villa del Parque, Argentina.. 96 


Watts College, Guntur, India 38 
Weltz, Justinianus von 
Westen, Thomas Von ........00 17 
White, Rev. and Mrs. Ralph 
1B), SAE CESS aan Cabal 97, 98 


277 

PAGE 
Wi intiner iV isa) Deel cigecstacscecsess 86 
WV OCED REIT |. tasers docstavceddeceoeacie 190 
Woerner)) Liydiai cancun 41, 69 
Wolf, inher Boe. 38, 97 
Wolters, earl gis ig ue 66, 194 


Woman, first, missionary, 
15, 39, 41, 78 
Women’s Missionary Feder- 


EIT peceey piace catiiet. c= 131, 143 
Women’s Missionary Society, 

hI I gs SAF tice ie Gi MR IGOE a a 89, 105 
World War, 

a 99, 190, 213, 238, 246, 250 
Wyman, Bred Wile oe 176 
Zenana Work, India ..........s00 61 
Ziegenblag, Bartholomew, 

2 133515 
ZANZENTOLE Ce heen iteieces 1314 


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AMERICAN LUTHERAN FOREIGN MISSION FIELDS 


The American Lutheran mission fields are indicated by dotted circles to which dotted lines have been drawn from the home base in America. The fields are: 

India: United Lutheran Church, Joint Synod of Ohio, Missouri Synod, Santal Society. 

China: United Lutheran Church (Shantung), Norwegian Church (Honan), Augustana Synod (Honan), Free Church (Honan), Lutheran Brethren (Hupeh), 
Missouri Synod (Hupeh, Szechwan). 

Africa: United Lutheran Church (Liberia), Norwegian Church (Zululand), Augustana Synod (Tanganyika), Lutheran Brethren (French Cameroon). 

Madagascar: Norwegian Church, Lutheran Free Church. 

New Guinea: Synod of Iowa. 

Kurdistan: Orient Mission Society. ; 

Siberia: Society for Lutheran Missions in Russia. 

Japan: United Lutheran Church. 

South America: United Lutheran Church (British Guiana and Argentina). 












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